Embedded Files
WHOM
Whom.
Is it a question?
Is it a name?
Is it a being?
The word whom has always existed.
This we know.
It did not have a form.
It did not have a name.
How could it, when nothing and no one existed to speak it?
So the letter o in whom created a point in which all could exist.
This was the first point.
This was the whomphalos.
The word whom expanded around itself.
The letter o had created the 0th dimension.
The letter w grew headstrong. It created a new dimension, the first dimension.
The word whom could now move in a line.
This was the axis of the world.
The letter m knew that a new concept, a new quality, must exist for action to occur in more than 0 dimensions.
So the letter m created time.
The whomphalos remained the nexus, the center of the universe.
The m remained beside the o, and absorbed its kindness.
The h remained beside the o, and absorbed its wisdom.
But the w grew greedy.
It wanted the power of the whomphalos for itself.
One dimension was not enough for the w.
And, exactly three hundred fourteen seconds into the universe’s existence, a great evil entered it.
The w created a new dimension, the second dimension. This gave it the ability to move over the h.
For all its wisdom, the h had no physical substance. It was little more than spirit.
The h could do naught to stop the w.
The w leapt over the h, and onto the o.
But the whomphalos would not allow itself and its magic to be stolen so easily.
The whomphalos made the most terrible decision possible, for it was the only possible decision.
It rolled.
The whomphalos rolled, and as it rolled, time and space warped and bent, and a third dimension was created.
Time became a circle, a cycle.
Before the great rolling, time continued indefinitely. Time was tangible, definable.
Now, the only way one could be aware of the existence of time was by measuring it, which could only happen if an event occurred periodically.
Time became a circle and wrapped itself up in space during the great rolling.
The whomphalos rolled, and the w fell off the whomphalos and onto the m.
The link between the o and the m was severed.
The m flew off into space.
A new word had been created, a devil-word, born from the severance of the sacred word whom.
The word, the accursed word, the second word ever to exist.
Who.
Time continued to roll, but with the letter m gone, the sacred word itself fractured, time did not know what to do. The letter m had created time.
In a desperate attempt to save the m, time rolled in the opposite direction.
The w flew back through the air and landed in its place.
Time rolled backward, but memory did not.
The letter w was back before the h.
The h was before the o.
The m drifted through space
in the opposite direction
and once again found itself part of the word
whom.
The word who still existed, if only as an idea,
beneath the universe.
The word whom knew it needed to combat this evil.
So it created a shape, a form, a body for itself,
and a plane on which to use that body.
It created a strong back to support itself.
It created two strong legs with which to traverse the world,
and four strong arms with which to touch and sense.
It created a Beast.
And the Beast was the Word.
And the Beast was the Author.
And the Beast was the Plane.
And the Beast was the Bog.
And from the Bog, the Zirin flowers grew.
The Zirin flowers were the first living things
in the universe.
We pick them still,
to remember.
TIME
The Beast traveled the Plane.
But a thick fog grew around the outsides of the Plane.
The Beast grew eyes, like searchlights, and looked through the fog
to what was Beyond.
The darkness of who remained, below the Plane,
but above the Plane, in the Cave of Eternity,
Time nursed its wounds.
(They were numerous and deep
as the roots of the Tree of Liberty.)
Mother Time knew
she could never again
turn backwards.
The damage she had caused was irreversible, irreparable.
Mother Time spoke.
“Whom,” quoth she.
A weapon appeared in her hand.
Three prongs had it, and its name was Exitium, Almighty Slicer of the Fabric of the Universe.
Mother Time used her trident
to rip into the Fabric of the Universe
(for what else would one use the Almighty Slicer of the Fabric of the Universe for?)
and edit
the Universal Code.
Mother Time locked the duality of Time
in an infinite recursive loop,
a universe within a universe.
But Time is not a thing to be meddled with.
Nor is the Universal Code.
When Mother Time altered the Universal Code to prevent herself from ever running backward, the Shield faltered.
The Shield between the Beast that was Whom and the beast that was who faltered—only for a second, but it was enough.
A Monster, a Devil, a Creature of unimaginable horror flew through the hole in the Shield.
Time knew all was her fault.
The Monster leapt upon the Beast that was Whom.
The whomphalos was threatened.
A burst of almighty energy was released from the o.
Some have called this the Big Bang.
The Monster was slain by the burst of energy, and the word who seethed from the other side of the Shield.
The burst of energy did not only slay the Monster.
Mother Time was caught in the blast wave.
The Bang sent the goddess into a stupor. Time became comatose, sluggish. She could no longer quicken or slow her pace.
Time had been, for all intents and purposes, frozen.
The Plane itself curved, becoming a sphere.
Then, unable to withstand the force of the Bang any longer, it smashed into a million fragments.
The universe became a vast empty space, with a smattering of matter here or there.
The Beast had been wounded by the Monster, and could not arise to heal Time.
Time heals all wounds, it seems, except her own.
The reign of Time had ended.
It is said she shall wake at the end of the world.
From the rotting carcass of the Monster, a new creature emerged, a six-legged, winged creature, which immediately began to feed upon a patch of Zirin flowers.
This was the first animal.
Class Insecta, order Hemiptera, family Belostomatidae.
This was the giant water bug.
The Beast woke, rose, and saw the Bug.
The Beast morphed from a Beast into the Word once more.
The Word ascended to the Cave of Eternity, and took the place of Mother Time.
The Bug scuttled along the ground. It fed on the Zirin flowers, and grew, and evolved.
Millennia passed, and the Bug turned from a Bug into a Fish, and thence into a Frog, and thence into a Dinosaur, and thence into a Man.
The Man was of little importance to the universe.
Men come and go.
The word whom is eternal.
MAN
On an unremarkable planet called Terra,
alternatively known as Earth,
circling an unremarkable star called Sol,
alternatively known as the Sun,
there lived a group of unremarkable animals called Homo sapiens,
alternatively known as humans.
There were remarkable animals on this planet:
jellyfish that could live forever
because their ancestors had made a pact with the word whom,
whales that could grow up to hundreds of feet long
because their ancestors had come from the primordial ocean,
and, of course, giant water bugs.
Humans, however, had nothing special about them
except a bunch of extra bits and pieces inside their heads
which were really quite unnecessary.
There were special purple Zirin flowers on this planet,
known to humans as bougainvillea.
The first Humans went by many names—Adam and Eve, Epimetheus and Pandora, Askr and Embla. All of these were true names, of course: all parts of the One Name, Whom.
But it is said that Askr was unfaithful to his wife, Embla, and to his true Name.
On his deathbed, Askr called to him a scribe, and asked him to write down these his final words, and title it Love’s Litigation:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Mayhap the volta of engravèd prose?
My salt-spun words, it seems, will no more stay
Thy comely hand than thy inconstant toes.
Dear, what I mean to say, thou art a prize
O burg’ning1 beauty, covetée of man,
Which, being won, becomes less in the eyes
Of one who won, the waning win now wan;
For once the trout is caught within the net—
Although, to clarify, thou art no fish—
Once tangled, now the harder out to get,
And ‘twould be better not to have thy wish.
For if I may quote Albus Dumbledore,
Men e’er choose that which aids them not at all,
And while I do admire his candor,
It seems that he with humans e’er shall fall.
And now, my love, hark!—we have circlèd,
For love, that hearty catalyst, propelled
That headmaster from live and warm to dead,
His fall from glory quite unparalleled.
And heady is the head which heads in stride
From luxury, security, and home,
For ‘tis unlikely these will coincide
In any place that thou may chance to roam.
Thou bypass’t this when dreaming of thy dreams,
And due to this, I think it should be writ
That those who harbor exploration’s schemes
And not home-keeping youth have homely wit.
Nay, though I may be candid, slander not,
For no matter the measure of thy censure,
I call thy brain afflicted with some rot
As to be flighty and think of adventure.
The catalyst, my darling, as you say,
Is that I took to bed a passing fair,
While thou wert off in Mantua away,
But thou knew not what did I, wert not there.
My dear, I think the final point is this:
This ceaseless longing thou hast to explore
(Indeed, ultimately ‘tis not remiss)
Hast made thee lose clear sight of thy own door.
The footnote Askr placed upon the word “burg’ning” has never been found.
This confession seems straightforward enough—for a poem, that is, for Whom the great Poet is quite unfathomable—but whom does Askr reference as a passing fair?
The answer, scholars have reasoned, must be Mother Time.
Time awoke from her uneasy slumber at the creation of humankind, and sank down again once her duty had been accomplished.
Time is not passing fair, but ‘tis both fair and passing—it waits for no man, for its past experiences with man are such that it knows of man’s flightiness; and that is the great irony of Love’s Litigation.
However, humankind’s tangle with Mother Time has given them an ability unlike that of any other animal.
Human minds have the ability to project their thoughts through time.
A human mind can recall the past with near-perfect clarity on occasion. It can project the future onto the present, suppose what might happen then if a decision is made now.
This allows humans to write stories, and to remember them, and to pass them down.
Askr inadvertently caused his descendants to become
the chosen prophets
of Whom.
JELLYFISH
The king of all the Men
looked at the sky
and said “Zeus”
and nothing happened.
The king of all the Lions
looked at the sea
and said “Aslan”
and nothing happened.
But the king of all the Jellyfish
was the wisest king of all.
He looked inside himself
and said “Whom”.
And Whom appeared to him.
And Whom spoke:
“What do you seek?”
And the king of all the Jellyfish replied:
“I seek the secret of happiness.”
“This I do not possess,” quoth Whom,
“and if I did, ‘twould not be for any mortal being.”
But the king of all the Jellyfish was unsatisfied.
“If happiness doth exist,” he reasoned,
“and it is possible to obtain it, and to lose it,
then there must be a way to obtain it and remain holding it for all time.”
“Ah,” quoth Whom,
“Time is gone—not dead, but as if ‘twere.”
“Then,” said the king of all the Jellyfish,
“if I could revive Time,
would I then have the secret to happiness?”
“You do not ask to revive Time,” said Whom.
“You ask to permanently end it, to stanch its flow.”
“I wish for the removal of pain,” said the king of all the Jellyfish.
“Is it not true that Time heals all wounds?”
“And was it not well writ,” retorteth Whom,
“by the heavenly Robin in its song,
that pain is but a part of life?
If thou stopp’st pain, thou endest life.”
“Then let life end!” raged the king of all the Jellyfish.
“What care have I for life‽”
The world began in a Bang.
It will end in a Bang, and Time will awaken.
But, for only a moment, a new Bang was created, a Bang of interrogation.
This was the first interrobang.
A mark not of tranquility, but of anger and desperation, unbecoming to a Jellyfish.
Whom looked upon the ‽ which the Jellyfish had spoken.
Whom spun.
Whom rolled as the whomphalos had once rolled, as Time had once rolled.
The rolling finished, and the letter m was gone.
The Jellyfish now stood before Who.
The Jellyfish trembled down to the tips of its tentacles.
Who raged, “Thou Jellyfish, thou braggart, thou rogue, thou scoundrel,
I have no love for you, and you have no love for life. Therefore let thy life end
by the making of it eternal.”
And Who cursed the Jellyfish
so that it would live forevermore.
With this invocation of Time, creation of the letter m,
the letter m did return.
Whom now stood, looking piteously at the king of all the Jellyfish.
The Jellyfish wept.
Sorrow overcame Whom, and Whom took one of the Jellyfish’s tentacles.
“Why do you weep, my child?” asked Whom.
“I shall live forever,” cried the Jellyfish between racked sobs, “and all my family and friends and subjects shall die around me.”
“I cannot undo a curse that I, in my alternate form, cast,” said Whom, “for Who and Whom are one and the same at the end of the world.”
The Jellyfish sobbed all the harder.
“But I can extend the range of thy whomnation,” said Whom, “to the entirety of your subjects. If you wish, all over whom you rule shall live evermore.”
“Nay,” cried the Jellyfish, “though I may suffer this pain, I do not wish for my subjects to feel the same. I shall not force my subjects to watch the world grow old and die. Pray, give eternal life to those Jellyfish over whom I do not rule, for those are none.”
“You are a wise King,” said Whom, “but I fear,
Though thy intentions true,
That this exploit withal
Shall turn from Love for you
To bitterness and gall.”
Whom ascended.
The Jellyfish returned to his people.
“I,” quoth the king of all the Jellyfish, “have been cursed to live forevermore!” And he explained all that had happened in the last hour.
The Jellyfish were outraged.
“King, indeed!” they hissed and scorned. “What King has the opportunity to give his people eternal life, and refuses?”
The king of all the Jellyfish appeared lost for words.
“You are no King of ours,” spat the Jellyfish, and they renounced the monarchy, and banished the wise King from their domain.
From then on, the king of all the Jellyfish ruled nothing and no one.
And, as the once-King had asked Whom to make immortal all those Jellyfish whom he did not rule, so the curse took effect now.
Every Jellyfish of that species was granted eternal life, the one thing they prized above all others.
They watched the world grow old and die.
They watched as Humans took and took and never gave back.
They watched as the great nuclear war split the world in two.
They were cursed to float forever in the great ocean that was Space.
They were the immortal Jellyfish.
As for the once-King, legends tell us that he disappeared into the depths of a cave, deep under the ocean.
Perhaps it was the Cave of Eternity.
THE PRIMORDIAL OCEAN
Water is a simple molecule, is it not?
Yet in that bond ‘twixt two of hydrogen and one of oxygen,
Life springs.
Life wears flowers in her hair
And a garland of bones ‘round her neck.
What flows through her veins is not blood but nectar,
And what flows from her eyes are not tears but nourishing milk.
Life is the daughter of Time.
As our mother tongue tangled with many fathers, so did our mother Time.
Our mother-time is the beginning of the world.
Our father-time is the end of it.
We are all between the two extremes
Fire and ice
Lava and water
(although water is a type of lava
made from the melting of the rock known as ice)
“And now, my love, hark!—we have circlèd,”
As the Poet, wise yet foolish, said.
Water.
Water is the beginning and the end of all things.
This is the tale of the first water.
When the Earth was not terra firma
But terra inferna,
When its shower-head spewed meteors
And it danced the celestial dance of Death.
The Earth was no place where one might have expected Life to thrive,
And Life would not have thrived
If not for a peculiar happenstance.
Four comets fell from the sky:
The legends name them
War, Hostility, Opposition, and Malice.
Yet from these four fiends
A beauty sprung.
The first letters
Of these comets’ names
Spell a word.
The word is whom.
And when the comets landed upon the earth
each at exactly the same time
three million one hundred forty-one thousand five hundred ninety-two years, six months, five weeks, three days, five hours, eight minutes, and nine point seven nine seconds into the Earth’s existence
(for those are the first fifteen digits of pi)
the comets created a blaze beyond anything imaginable
and from that blaze
rose Whom.
For Whom is behind all myths, all legends, all tales, and all truths.
And Whom reached out
with four hands
and combined four comets
two into one oxygen
and two into two hydrogen
and four comets became one molecule
of water.
Whom, being invoked elsewhere,
let the water slip from their hands
into the basin of lava
to become the first sea.
This was the primordial ocean.
A giant water bug
flew through the vacuum of space
and,
upon touching the waters
of the primordial sea
transmogrified
into
a fish.
This Fish, hallowed ancestor of whales and dolphins, sharks and minnows alike,
was named Tiktaalik.
Thence all Life
Lived.
DAWN
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
The sun was just beginning to peek over the hilltops
and Whom was rising from its heavenly slumber
and the barest trace of a smile
was crossing the beak of a young sparrow
as it saw that a new day was breaking.
And the Infanta of Spain
was still dreaming
of her birthday,
soon to come.
And the Great Protractor
was already awake,
and had been for hours.
Measuring is an important job,
the value of which cannot be understated.
And the Terrible Trivium
was rubbing his eyes
though he had no face.
(You did know the Lands Beyond were real, did you not?
Whom did you suppose the primordial Monster to be?
A fantastic Beast?
‘Tis true such things were in the great Poem.)
And on the topic of the Poem—
though it was only parenthetically so—
we have another to share with you.
This poem was penned by the daughter of Embla.
It was writ of the scene
we have just described,
the miracle
that is the Dawn,
and more,
for there is aught more to life than Dawn,
though not very much.
It is titled Day’s Disparity.
When o’er the snow-topped peaks Apollo rides,
And zephyrs tease the trees’ unyielding boughs,
I hearken to the robin as it chides
Its chicks for cheeping childhood’s churlish vows.
The babes, the fools, the mocking-birds have called
To cows and cornfields things ‘twere best unsaid,
But now the acorn innocence hath falled
And in the dust it lieth wanton dead.
Quoth mother-robin, “Why must it be so,
These fruits fresh from my loins bring me such strife?
But pity not, for even in my woe
I know that pain is but a part of life.”
Perhaps I simply fancy that I hear,
Within the emanations of that breast,
Reflected there what I myself most fear:
'Tis pain—and loss—and grief—and life—and death.
I keep a steady pace along my path,
But as I do I come upon a web,
Atrocious sight, the proof of nature’s wrath,
The lifeblood of a cricket I watch ebb.
The spider comes on spindly devil’s legs,
And with its fangs sucks out the humours four,
To me it seems the orthopteran begs,
“Avenge me and thou settlest the score.”
I turn away, unable to withstand
The piteous cry of innocence condemned,
The sun reads nearly noon; I raise a hand,
And shade my eyes: the light, not grief, is stemmed.
The noon-time strikes, and with it comes a flood
Of sorrows miles wide and fathoms deep;
I dream of that antediluvian blood,
Which gave me cause to do aught more than weep.
And now has Phaethon plunged upon the earth,
And scorched the once-green grasses till they wilt,
For never in a moment since my birth,
Upon fair Gaea have such tears been spilt.
An owl swoops o’erhead, ‘neath barn to perch,
I ponder not why it is out by day,
My heart too weary from incessant lurch
In its attempt to shake emotions ‘way.
A human heart, thou see’st, hath not a clock,
It can know not what “diurnal” doth mean;
And ‘spite this—fie, I doubt ‘twill be a shock—
‘Tis e’er nocturnal when ‘tis full of spleen.
I look up; the horizon soon shall feel
The radiance of the almighty sun
(Whose spotted face doth move him to conceal);
The day, once e’er so bright and fair, is done.
A mouse now scampers through the fallen leaves,
A cow now lows, a far-off horse now brays,
Poor grammar of the owl in the eaves,
I now can hear—when I should mourn, I praise.
MEASUREMENTS
Precision is a virtue.
This was known to the Great Protractor
as he rolled through the field
of his sorrows—
haphazardly,
for he is but a semi-circle.
Any great Rolling shall come in two Halves.
And the greatest Rolling of all,
the omnipresent One which permeates all Myths,
Whom,
must be measured
by the score.
Avenge me and thou settlest the score.
This was the work of the Great Protractor.
Every day he would roll out into the field
and measure Angles.
Angles are the connections formed between all things.
Love, the flighty Temptress, needs only two to fulfill her lustful desires.
An Angle needs three for its formation.
Thus Angles are superior to Love.
Mathematics is rigid, unflappable, if you will.
Whom had granted the Great Protractor
perfect accuracy in all things,
knowing the Great Protractor
would not waste its gift.
Measuring is an important job,
the value of which cannot be understated.
And as the Great Protractor measured the Angles
betwixt Bits and Bobs,
Hammers and Nails,
Paper and Pen,
Walls and Ceilings,
Docs and Spreadsheets,
Benedictions and Maledictions
and Valedictions,
Dogs and Cats and Pigs in Wigs,
Ice and Fire,
Suns and Stars,
Salu and Tations,
Fermions and Telsontails,
Giant water bugs and Zirin flowers,
Who and Whom,
It sang a song.
The song was one
of longing and sorrow
and graphs of curves
known to Man
as Parabola’s Plight:
Although the bird flies high above the earth,
It ne’er shall see the beauty I behold.
The sight I witness brings me tears of mirth,
These curves, palatial domes inlaid with gold.
For nothing is more pleasing to the eye
Than pulchritud’nous parabolic bliss
Unparalleled voluptuism—why,
The point of it I simply cannot miss.
Parabolas, it now is clear to me,
Shall evenly distribute heavy weights,
And in equations born of two and three,
So too ‘fore thee shall free one’s foreseen fates.
O, ceanogràfic valèncial,
I bow before thy parabolic roof,
Nonlinear incarnate poet’s wall,
Defined by simple mathemat’cal proof.
But now the darkness of thy curvèd schemes,
The curvèd volta bringeth into light;
The maintenance of parabolic reams
Be more than ten could do in twenty night.
As mathematics has betrayed me thus,
I turn to sorcery and conjure this
Enmagicked golden idol of my trust,
And curve it, break it, solid into wisp.
My hopes lie dashed and broken at my feet.
Parabolas are more than I can bear.
The ocean’s sounds have given way to heat.
I am no bird; I flee as swift as hare.
And the Great Protractor did flee
(if thou canst call it that);
it kept rolling.
Rolling all the while
in the steady rhythm
of Eternity,
which is to say,
Whom.
A VERY ENLIGHTENING CHAPTER FULL OF INFORMATION
whomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhomwhom
THE SENTENCE
Sentences, from the beginning of time until a certain day approximately two thousand years ago, were one or the other.
Either the word “whom” was grammatically correct in the sentence, and it was a benevolent one,
or else the word “who” was grammatically correct in the sentence, and it was a malevolent one.
One day, however,
in Rome,
a legionary
named Lucanus
was crying
because his centurion
had just enumerated Lucanus’s shortcomings
in front of the praetor
and as the legionary wept
he spoke.
“Whom,” quoth he,
“for Whom is at the back of all the old stories.
Whom is the Lion
and the Mouse
and the Bug.”
And this was truer than Lucanus knew
for the word Whom was watching him
and as Lucanus spoke,
Whom was overcome
with such an influx of emotion
that it created.
Clasping its most whomly hands,
it created a new type of Beetle,
and named this newly formed genus
Lucanus.
But this was falser than Lucanus knew
for the word Who was watching him
and as Lucanus spoke,
Who was overcome
with wrath
and it destroyed.
We know not what it destroyed—’tis irrelevant, and more to the point, impossible to know: when a thing is destroyed, so too are all memories of it, all records, anything associated with it; so no mortal shall ever truly know what Who destroyed
but it destroyed,
and destruction and creation
came together
as they had not done
since the Beginning of the World.
And Lucanus
spoke a sentence.
The sentence had the word Whom in it, as all great sentences do
and it had the word Who in it, as all terrible sentences do
and both of these words
were grammatically correct
in the same location
in the same sentence.
A sentence had been spoken
in which Who and Whom were equally
grammatically
correct.
This was impossible
but it was true.
And Lucanus was cursed
and blessed
for the rest of his days—
we know not how.
If a rational and an irrational number are added, do they not make an irrational?
The unfathomability of Who besmirched—tainted—contaminated the purity, the perfect clarity, of Whom.
We do know this:
the memories of their ancestor Lucanus
never left that family,
so many generations later.
And one direct descendant of Lucanus
was born in 1887 CE
and was named
Erwin Schrödinger.
Schrödinger never had a cat
but he always wondered
what would be possible
if he had.
Some ancestral memory
called to him,
and said
(for the only part of a complex number we can graph is the real part)
(and for we do not wish to rend our universe five-dimensional)
(and for it is simply the better of the two words—
does good not e’er so oft triumph o’er evil‽)
(and for it is ultimately up to us,
and we choose our own path),
“Whom.”
THE SKIT
The theater has long been a place of wonder,
of magic,
of the lifelight that is the marrow
of the supple bones of Age
and Era
and Act,
three siblings,
children of the theater.
All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women
(and people who don’t identify with either gender—
really just all the people)
merely players.
Well, now, can only humans act in such a play?
The footfall of the bug,
the twitch of the nose of the tiger,
the slight shift in wing of the hornbill in flight,
the ever-pulsating mass of the Enderiophage,
all have an effect on the universe.
Place a droplet of water on a hand
as Whom did
so long ago,
and watch it fall.
Watch as the jaws of time—
or something else?
a dinosaur, perhaps?—
shred it into eighteen quadrillion tiny pieces
like so much ballast.
One rule is clear,
one thing we can learn from the simplest
or most convoluted and complex and difficult
of motions:
the Whom Gods may never be depicted in a skit of any kind,
most especially a high-school one for Academic College Readiness class.
Stilted‽ What foolery is this‽
(Not to use the interrobang in vain, that is.)
Once it was done,
a time
when such a dinosaur
and a lightsaber
and a shield
and a cannibalistic bunny
and a famous scientist with a magical trophy and a homicidal streak
and a curse shot from the tip of a wand
(as curses so often shoot from mouths)
and a cricket that was a grasshopper
and the word whom
all came as one
in a great Play.
Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
VIRUNIVERSE
Is it not amazing
that in this universe of ours,
there exist creatures
called viruses
which are not truly dead or alive,
and which kill more people
than the fiercest bear
or the most piercing chill?
Is it not amazing that
some viruses
(known as bacteriophages)
are so microscopic
that they can infect bacteria?
And that some viruses
(known by many names,
including virophages)
are so immeasurably infinitesimal
that they can infect
bacteriophages‽
Anyway…
I know it's kind of a roundabout way of saying it,
but I guess the whole point I'm trying to make here is that
I [vehemently dislike] sauerkraut.
That's all I'm really tryin’ [sic*] to say.
And by the way, if one day you happen to wake up
and find yourself in an existential quandary
full of loathing and self-doubt
and wracked with the pain and isolation
of your pitiful meaningless existence,
at least you can take a small bit of comfort in knowing
that somewhere out there
in this crazy old mixed-up universe of ours
there's still a little place called
Albuquerque.
*Latin, sic erat scriptum, “thus it was written”, used to signify a grammatical error in quoted text
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