When I was in college, my professor told me to kill off the main character immediately, but I was too scared to do it because I loved my main character. No, I probably was too scared to do it because my main character generally is a poorly masked replica of myself or someone I care about. No, he didn't tell me to kill the main character; he told me to kill the main character's father. But the father kind of was the main character, depending on what mattered to you in the story. But I have to work with the education I've been given.
Anyway, Nemesio was biking to work from the gym. In his bike basket, he had a latte with a lot of sugar to mask a lot of espresso, because he was basically a high-functioning robot running off chemicals to keep him awake and then chemicals later on to help him sleep. I'm not sure how it didn't spill. Maybe his basket had a latte holder. In his pocket, he had a phone that pinged him constantly whenever anyone thought about him enough to interact with him, and whatever he was doing when the pinging happened generally seemed worth suspending, including spending actual time with actual people.
Honestly, Nemesio was concerned about his ability to exist in the world around him. It seemed like, as a byproduct of the day and age in which he lived, there were two worlds constantly coexisting: the flesh and blood world full of trees and dirt and hands to hold and broken chicken's necks and breathing and falling out of kayaks and cousins and looking far off into the distance at mountains draped in fog. This was the world where you could lie on your stomach on grass and get wet from the dew and make the grass wet from your tears, and people could see you do this, and you could see them see you.
Then, there was the other world. There was the world that interrupted you while you were lying on the grass to tell you that you had twenty unread emails and four answering machine messages from elderly paranoid acquaintances. It was the world that fucked with the real world. It consisted of fake emotions based entirely on miscommunication. People could hate your guts because they didn't ping your pocket for a day. Deadlines made up out of someone's ass that, if unmet, could wreck you. This world is invisible, but is poking you every second of your life.
Nemesio biked down the street and suddenly the sky opened up. A beam of light as wide as a bike warmly peeked through a crack in a cloud and gulped him up, bike and all. No one around him even noticed, due to the psychological phenomenon of inattentional blindness, which is a major result of world number two. A little rogue kitten curled up on the side of the street did notice, because kittens live square in world number one. As he was sucked up into the sky, he grabbed his latte to make sure it did not spill.
At this point, the world(s) branched into two separate worlds of their own: Nemesio's experience in the sky and everyone else on Earth's experience without Nemesio. The fact that I'm even considering the first path is indicative of how afraid of death I am and how unwilling I am to embrace the advice I was given in college.
On Earth:
Worlds one and two continued without Nemesio. His phone fell out of his pocket and dropped to earth, startling the kitten and causing her to leap away. It buzzed and pinged as it fell.
On the other end of one of the buzzes was Lucca, who cared deeply about Nemesio, but he was too wrapped up in trying to pass as a human to notice. Another buzz was from the five elderly people who were constantly chattering at Nemesio. Another was spam. Another was from Nemesio's mother, who was disappointed in him because he wasn't making up for all the mistakes she made in her own life.
Lucca really missed Nemesio. She decided to move on and find someone else, so she walked down the street and found that kitten. The kitten was staring straight up at the sky, but Lucca was so wrapped up in her own head that she didn't notice. If she had paid attention to the kitten, she would have looked up and seen a hole in the sky with a ray of light coming out, and maybe she would have seen a bicycle with its kickstand out settled on an emerald floor.
In the sky:
Nemesio was really warm and comfortable as he ascended, only briefly shuddering as he passed through clouds. After thirty-four minutes, he reached an emerald platform. He kicked out his kickstand and took a sip of his lukewarm latte. His brain was still in World #2 mode, but he snapped out of it as he realized, even if he hadn't dropped it, he would have had no reception on his phone. The sky was metallic and dark blue. Everything tasted great. You could eat dirt, eat the emerald ground, eat your hand, eat your bike, didn't matter.
A cup bounced up to him. The cup was white and generic-looking, but was about six feet tall.
"Nemesio," said the cup.
"Cup," said Nemesio, slightly fazed.
"Hello," said the cup.
"What's up, cup?" said Nemesio, proud of his rhyming. Then he blushed, because he realized he said something stupid to a talking cup.
"I need you to destroy World #2," said the cup.
"What are the characteristics of World #2?" asked Nemesio, who had thus far been lumping World #1 and World #2 together. "Is it this? I can't destroy this. Blah blah blah blah..." the cup cut Nemesio off.
"World #2 is the world where everything beautiful is lost. It's directed by distraction. Everyone's brains are wired incorrectly in World #2. I created it and I regret my creation, but it is out of control." The cup flashed red.
"How did you create it?" Nemesio asked the cup.
"Someone else created the universe. But it was imperfect. Humans are imperfect. People needed help in the mornings and people needed help at nights. People needed help talking to other people. People were scared and people worked too hard. So I jumped in to help. But it went too far. I need you to destroy World #2 and bring it back to its former, flawed, World #1 glory."
While the cup was talking, Nemesio got distracted and looked at the edible ruby rocks around him and the smaller bouncing cup children playing games in the distance. He sort of missed the point of what the cup was saying, but sort of got it. "Okay, destroy Earth, okay, got it," said Nemesio, and the cup flashed red again.
"Gahhhhhh! World #2 is infecting us even here!" He bounced over Nemesio and backwards and to the side and to the other side until Nemesio was finally paying attention. Then he repeated everything he said.
On Earth:
It started raining because, far above Lucca's head, a six-foot tall cup was jumping and spilling.
Lucca was sad that Nemesio barely knew she existed, so she fell into a depression instead of realizing he had been sucked up into the sky. She drank some whiskey and lay down in the grass, trying to emulate World #1, but when your head is that far up your own ass, you're still in World #2. She decided to give up forever on Nemesio, but then she realized her calling. People were always asking her to find her passion in life, and she sometimes said her passion was one thing or another thing, but then she did that thing and hated it. Then she would say she had no passion, and people would assume she was depressed, which was accurate, but she would never admit it. But as she lay on the grass, staring at the hole in the sky, she realized her passion was to dig a hole to the other side of the Earth and find the identical doppelganger of herself that lived on the other side, doing everything exactly mirroring what she did.
All she had was her phone, so she smashed her phone into a spoon shape and began digging.
In the sky:
Although Nemesio knew he had to destroy World #2, he was also worried about his job. He had a lot of work to do, and because he was in the sky, he was not getting his work done. He was worried that he would get fired, and he was worried that everyone who depended on his work was going to have a difficult time. What he didn't realize was that he was employed in a field that only existed as a result of World #2's existence. If he were to destroy World #2, he wouldn't need to have that job.
Since Nemesio was staring all over and hardly able to pay attention to anything, the cup scooped him and the bike up and spilled him back to Earth. He landed right where he'd been taken, and the kitten hissed. Lucca did not notice Nemesio because she was too preoccupied thinking about him and digging her hole. Nemesio biked to work and did some work there because it is what he was used to. On the way to work, he picked up his phone, which he found in the middle of the road.
On Earth:
Nemesio texted Lucca. "You won't believe what just happened." She did not respond because her phone was a shovel. He texted her again, "I'm bored." She did not respond because she was one mile underground, still digging.
After Nemesio got home, he made a list of ways to destroy World #2.
- Destroy cups
- Destroy phones
He threw out his phone and his cup, but that left about seven billion more phones and about fifty trillion more cups. "Howww do I get rid of that many more cups and phones? What else is part of World #2?" He asked himself, walking without looking where he was going. He then fell into a hole.
By the time he noticed he was falling, he had already fallen two miles. He took a swig of whiskey from his flask, which he identified as a non-cup, and therefore considered part of World #1. Then he screamed for help. One mile later, he smushed Lucca.
"Ukkkkkhhhkkkkh," she said.
"Help," whimpered Nemesio.
They then recognized each other and embraced.
"What are you doing?" asked Nemesio.
"I am digging a hole to the other side of Earth, where my doppelganger lives who does everything exactly the same as I do, just in reverse," explained Lucca.
"Why?" asked Nemesio. Lucca beamed because Nemesio was talking to her, and this validated her entire existence. But yet, she knew she had to move on from him.
"Because," said Lucca, "It's my passion."
"That's your passion?" asked Nemesio. "To dig this hole?"
Lucca thought about it and began seriously questioning her decision. "Maybe not," she said. But she was already quite far. She dug as they talked.
"You should follow your passion," said Nemesio. He sized up the situation. The only cup was a flask and the only phone was a shovel, so he was pretty sure that, at least from his perspective, he had succeeded in destroying World #2. That was his only life goal, so now he needed a new one.
"What's your passion?" asked Lucca.
"I need a new life goal," interrupted Nemesio. "I think my new goal is also to dig this hole and find the person on the other side of the world who does everything I do, but in reverse."
"Why?" asked Lucca, who was still in doubt of her own decision. She was standing very close to Nemesio, because they were in a small hole together, and she realized that his face swirled around in a confusing manner. She could not tell what he was thinking or whether he was even really a person.
"Because," said Nemesio, "no one understands me. No one experiences the world from my perspective except this one person on the other side of the world. I think we would fall in love. I think we would be able to talk about cups and phones. I think finally I'd be able to truly communicate." Lucca was human, but this still resonated deeply with her.
"Yes," she said, "I concur. I would also like to find one person with whom I could talk and relate who has experienced everything exactly the same as I have. There is no one I can talk to about my experiences and desires except this person on the other side of the world."
As they talked, they dug. They dug and talked for years and grew old together. They ate earthworms and groundhogs and their hair grew long and gray. Their experience together was completely unparalleled. The world went on above them and no one noticed or cared that they were down there. Their families and friends missed them, grieved, and eventually moved on. Their jobs were completely fine without them. And all the while, as they dug and talked, the subject always came back up that they were stoked to finally meet the people who would understand them most and who were most like them -- these doppelgangers who did exactly what they did, just in a mirror image.
Finally, they hit a door. They dug around until they could see what it said, and it said (in every language): "This is the door to the core of the Earth." Lucca tried to open it and couldn't. Nemesio tried to open it and couldn't. Together, they grasped it with all four of their hands and pulled it open.
Inside the core of the Earth, there was a clean white room with a ball of fire in the center. Lucca and Nemesio looked across and saw two old people with knotty, long, gray hair facing back at them. All four donned fireproof suits (which were provided by the Core of the Earth Tourism Department) and ran across until they met in the ball of fire at the center of the Earth.
Lucca and Lucca's doppelganger touched their index fingers together. Nemesio and Nemesio's doppelganger touched their index fingers together. Nemesio turned to Lucca.
"How does it feel to finally succeed in your passion?" he asked, while at the same time, Nemesio's doppelganger turned to Lucca's doppelganger.
"Pretty good. Pretty good. Not bad," the Luccas said. Then, the two Luccas looked at each other and tried to talk. But they couldn't, because everything they said, they said at the same time. The Nemesios also tried, but got discouraged very quickly.
They all stood around awkwardly, regretting this voyage. Then, they switched sides, so that the original Lucca and Nemesio stood where the doubles had previously stood on the far side of the room, and vice versa.
There was so much going on in both of their heads. For years, they had grown old thinking there was one person out there who really understood them, and it was their double on the other side of the Earth. But the truth was that the doubles were too similar, and that they could never be together with these doubles. The doppelgangers on the other side of the room realized this at the same time.
But they were all so old and so tired and had devoted every last ounce of their energy to this for their whole lives.
Lucca and Nemesio wrapped their arms around each other and breathed their real, genuine, warm World #1 breaths on each other's necks, then removed their fire-resistant suits and jumped into the core of the Earth together.
I loved this.
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