Cézanne built his world out of 3 basic shapes. No one on Earth could have possibly know how close he was to knowing The Truth About The Creator of All Things. No one else was even close to figuring it out: not doctors, not theologians, not scientists. The scientists spent all their time figuring out masses and atoms and neutrinos. If they were hoping to figure out The Truth, they would be upset to know their masses were meaningless and all of it was just a waste of time and money.
Out in a forest, one mountain knew that Cézanne was the closest to discovering The Truth; and if the artist, through a series of impossible and unlikely events, could ever meet Douglas Adams, the two of them together could have eventually stumbled upon The Truth. The mountain, however, did nothing because it cared very little for humans - and also because it was just a mountain.
If a person found out what the mountain knew, they would never believe it. If someone told you about The Truth and that there was a mountain somewhere out there that knew this Truth, you wouldn’t believe a single word they said. Their stories would be crazy stories filled with crazy, possibly made-up words.
A guy named Jack did recently stumble upon The Truth About The Creator of All Things, and even he didn’t quite believe even after it happened to him. He also didn’t believe it as it was happening to him, but Jack was kind of an aloof asshole.
Jack was just walking in the woods he used to play in. The woods seemed so big and oversized then. It oddly felt the same now. Maybe the woods just stayed like that, he thought, big and oversized.
He trudged through the large foliage on a path, following it farther and farther until it faded out in a cluster of trees and bushes. He reached the undergrowth that consumed the trail. Tangled up in the foliage was a barbed wire fence with a hand painted sign declaring “NO TRESPASSING” in big, bold letters. Jack pushed a clump of bushes over the sign as he found a fence post to hop over. He kept walking through the woods.
I’ve been walking a long fucking time. He kept going past the end of the path until he came out to a meadow of just grass - normal, ordinary grass. On his right was more woods that encircled the meadow. On his left was a large mountain. What was most astounding about this mountain was that Jack didn’t even know it existed. He had never been this far out, but he was pretty sure everyone within 100 miles should have known about this mountain. Except they didn’t.
Halfway between him and the mountain was another fence this time taller and -
Is that fence fucking electrified? He thought. No. Just really fucking tall and barbed wiry.
Despite the really tall, not electrified fence in front of him, Jack pulled his Swiss-Army-knife-with-the-wire-cutters out from his pocket and began cutting a hole. He squeezed through freshly made opening, only getting a tiny tear in his shirt from the barbed wire.
He walked up to the edge of the mountain. The section he stood in front of was almost an upright wall of stone. It was mostly moss and grass covered, creating a blanket of green that curved from the meadow vertically up the rocks. Towards the middle, two boulders parted into the entry of a cave. Jack thought the cave seemed inviting, even though the mountain, should it have been alive and had wishes and feelings, wanted to remain wholly ignored. Jack stood in the entrance, clicked on his keychain flashlight, and walked into the dark abyss. He looked back towards the woods, before rounding a turn in the tunnel
Jack scanned tunnel with his flashlight suspiciously, waiting for a booby trap to spring on him. After the first 50 feet in the tunnel, he was starting to get irritated that there wasn’t yet another fence or obstacle for him to get over. Not even an “abandon all ye hope and faith fuckers” sign like in the pirate movies, he thought.
Jack walked for twenty minutes without encountering so much as another turn in the tunnel. He began to wonder if the tunnel would ever do anything different at all. He wanted a corner with a pile of skeletons in various stages of decomposition, you know, the kind of shit you’d WANT to find mysterious unknown mountain. Or what if the floor fell out from under him into another lower cave? Or what if he discovered a lost pirate ship with a treasure of gold? Anything but twenty more minutes of exploring the world’s fucking most boring tunnel, he thought. There wasn’t even any trash in the tunnel - none, it was pristinely clean dirt and rock.
Jack began bargaining with the mountain: Alright, tunnel, you get five more minutes to impress me because you’ve done a shit job so far. Actually, he said this out loud to the mountain. The mountain, should it actually have been alive, would have been greatly irritated by Jack. And, should the mountain been alive AND capable of retaliating, it would have dropped a rock on Jack.
Three minutes into Jack’s demand, he saw the glow of a light softly illuminating a turn in the tunnel. Jack assumed that with the distance he had walked, he was coming out the other end of the mountain. He clicked off his flashlight and rounded the corner, anticipating into a field of grass. He certainly didn’t expect to find the light source was an extremely large, gilded chandelier hanging 20 feet in the air. He even more certainly didn’t expect the chandelier to be hanging from the ceiling of a giant foyer in the cave. And he most certainly didn’t expect that this chandelier and foyer lead to a giant wood door for a person five times Jack’s size.
A crack in one of planks of the door let light from inside spill out into the cavern where Jack stood. He could just sneak through that crack, right into the house.
Wait, is it really a house, Jack thought. Maybe a mountain castle? A mountain castle for a giant? I would be like the Jack that climbed the beanstalk and robbed the giant of his mother fucking golden-egg-laying goose and lived rolling in money for the rest of his life. Was the giant and the goose story the same one? He couldn’t remember. All the fairy tales were basically the same: get rich, getta bitch. Jack ultimately decided though, if there was a goose that laid eggs that would make him rich, he would definitely steal it.
He held his breath and squeezed through the crack. Get rich, getta bitch. Get rich, getta bitch. Jack chanted.
Jack was convinced at this point in his adventure that the golden goose scenario was the one that was actually happening. The second most likely was a giant squid in a very deep pool of water, and the pool of water was so tiny that the squid could hardly move and was surrounded by a forest of palm trees and fig newtons. The third scenario was a secret Moulin Rouge style club run entirely by flamingos specifically catering to the desires of the discerning waterfowl. The mountain outside creaked with the adjustments of erosion. And should it have been alive, it would have thought that Jack was an idiot and dropped another rock on him.
Jack was so indescribably underwhelmed by the scene that appeared in front of him on the other side of the door. It was a group of people sitting around a table in a normal looking “apartment” playing a strange game that looked suspiciously like Yahtzee. And they weren’t even giants. They were the same height as him; they were normal looking people. The ceiling was so high that Jack couldn’t see it, but the drywall for the living space only went up 10 feet.
“What the fuck is this? Where’s my god damned gold?” Jack exclaimed, angry at the door’s deception and irked there wasn’t a single goose, squid or flamingo anywhere.
For the next few minutes, the group of people seated at the table just stared astoundingly at the intruder Jack. A pre-teen girl was the first to move.
“There’s no money. Why are you here?” a mass of curls bounced as the girl cocked her head.
The girl was bitchy, Jack through, but they all were at that age. “I’m here because I walked, but call me when you’re legal.” Jack said.
The mountain groaned again, really wishing it could drop a rock on Jack.
“First of all, gross. Second, you’re so old you could be my dad’s pervy friend that everyone keeps their kids away from. Third, the only people who say that are people who’s own generation, because you’re so fucking ancient you’re in a whole other generation, deems them so beyond help they ignore them in hope that they vanish so you have to try desperately for people much younger than you who will eventually realize you’re a waste of a person, but haven’t yet.”
“Whatever. You’ll probably end up being ugly anyway,” Jack paused. “What game are you guys playing?”
The others at the table, an African man, an Indian man, an Aboriginal woman, and a Latino woman, looked at the girl and then at Jack in disbelief. For a few minutes, the entire table stared at Jack. They all silently watched him as he started walking towards the table, noticed wine on the counter and redirected his path to the kitchen counter. Jack was surprised no one had said anything yet. Maybe only the bitchy one could talk and everyone else was a mute. Maybe they’re robot people?
Jack began searching the cupboards for wine glasses. He found some weird octagonal glasses.
He filled his glass from an already open wine bottle. As it filled, it illuminated the decorative crystal pattern on the outside. The group of people watched Jack look around the room. He was now, at this very moment, sitting in a giant room in a cave with a giant front door. And in that giant room was a completely normal and looked-like-his-friend-Mike’s living room that his mom kept saying was “open concept.” There were some doorways carved in the rock on either side of the main room that, he assumed, led to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Off to the right was a long span of bookshelves, they’re like every bookshelf in those stupid wizard movies his ex made him watch 800 times. They were three stories high, and from what Jack could see, each row and story of shelves had labels: Mammals, Fish, Moss, Sharks, Viruses, and a bunch of numbers.
Fuck the deward decimal or whatever that was they made us learn in school, Jack thought. Numbers and books were two things that he hated.
“If there’s no money, there’s no gambling. So are you guys playing the nerdiest fucking Yahtzee game or what,” he set the glass down on the table. He moved towards the table to an open chair. “Are you guys playing like Dungeons & Dragon shit? My cousin tries to get me to play that shit with him every Christmas. I have to explain to him: I am cool. My bros will not think I am cool if I get within 5 feet of that game.”
The group maintained their silence and continued staring at Jack.
“I can leave if you want to keep playing your game or whatever,” Jack replied to the silence and stares. “I’ll just finish my wine and be on my merry fucking way.” He began chugging his wine.
The Indian man made an unintelligible noise. Jack noticed it was the first time since he arrived that they weren’t all staring at him. The fuckers were purposefully looking away. A light went off in the corner. An obnoxious and obtrusive pulsating red light. It was almost painful and perched on top of a computer station. An alarmingly pleasant song loudly accompanied the light. It was a song from the 1950’s trying to seduce you into happy complacency.
“What the fuck?” yelled Jack with his hand over his ears.
Jack watched as the people ignored the light and took cups from a shelf under the table. The Latino woman poked a button on the computer with a long back scratcher. The light and sound stopped. Alright, thought Jack, this is even weirder than his cousin’s nerd games. Somehow the computer told these people they needed to roll their dice? He watched as each person shook their cups, rattling the contents like bored and drunk vacation gamblers. When they finally rolled, what came bouncing out of the cups was an assortment of geometric shapes in a variety of muted colors. They bounced around on the table; no one there but Jack was remotely interested in what was happening.
“Whoa. Those are the craziest dice I ever saw in a game. What game is this? I should tell my mom to get my cousin this game for Christmas or something. He would love this shit.” Jack went to pick up one of the dice. The girl smacked his hand away before he could pick one up.
“Now, you wanna stop talking. Get your cup and roll. You’re in this game now too I guess,” the African said to Jack. He waited and Jack didn’t move. “Roll,” he said louder.
Jack found a cup with a die in it near him. He flipped the cup upside down and spilled his roll on the table. The woman next to him pulled a tray out from under her seat. She carefully loaded each of the shaped die into the tray. She placed them snuggly into their corresponding shape holes, making sure the same face rolled remained upwards. She then slid the tray over to the Indian man sitting on her right. Without getting out of his chair, he rolled himself to the computer station and put the tray in the oven-like device under the computer.
Everyone was silent, but only half paying attention to what was happening. One of them even cared so little they were sketching. But Jack was intently watching it all. Alright, he thought. This, this is a lot weirder than finding giants or a goose. Like Lost shit. Or SAW!
“What the hell is this game? I’m not going to get like fucking mind-fuck murdered here, am I?” said Jack. He jumped when a laser audibly began scanning the tray.
SCANNING TRAY. SCANNING TRAY. It yelled repeatedly at the room.
The laser finished scanning the tray and the computer screen blinked to life. The old woman whispered something to the woman next to her.
“No, I don’t know what it means either,” she responded.
“It means he’s afraid we’re going to make him feel like he’s stupid before we kill him,” the girl replied. The old woman was taken aback and began explaining how they weren’t going to kill him and something else, something else, something else, but Jack stopped listening. He missed what happened with the computer in the next couple of minutes because the woman next to him stuck her head in between Jack and the computer, making sure she was maintaining eye contact the entire time she was talking to him.
“SHUT UP. Oh my god. Shut up lady. Do you even know there’s a fucking scanner that is a fucking oven that has a fucking god damned laser that’s connected to a computer which is connected to a lightbulb with an existential crisis. How do none of you care about that? You act like this isn’t the weirdest fucking thing? Am I on acid? Is there fucking LSD in the wine -” Jack yelled first at the old woman and then at the entire table.
“Not that anyone but him will care, but it’s a frog” the Indian man said as he propelled himself in his wheeled chair back to the table. He tossed the print out on the table before dumping all the geometric shapes on top of it. Everyone at the table grabbed a shape and put it in their cup.
“A frog? The whole thing just makes a picture of some fucking reptile?” Jack yelled at the group.
“It’s not a game. Maribelle just told you that. We just made a new species of frog. That’s what we do. Weren’t you even listening?” said the girl
“Who the fuck is Maribelle?” muttered Jack.
“It seems to be the only thing we make anymore.” the African man grumbled.
What’d the old woman say? Was she Maribelle? She had to be. What had she said after the part where she said they wouldn’t kill him. Jack’s mind was blank. Jack went through all the words he remembered her saying.
“Wait you seriously expect me to believe that this computer is God assisted by you cup roller jockey bitches. And you guys YaHtzee up new and undiscovered species of animals. That is the fucking lamest version of God I could have possibly imagined.”
No, he thought, the most surprising and lamest thing God could ever be is the genetic offspring of a koala and sloth filling out bureaucratic forms for every single thing created. The mountain unknowingly dropped some slightly large pebbles on Jack and in his wine, but had it known, it would have been satisfied to know that it had.
“Why can’t we ever make a bird? Or a mammal every once in awhile. The last 120 rolls have been all frogs.” the man asked looking up into the skyward abyss, ignoring Jack. “What is anyone supposed to do with that many frogs? Earth does not need this many frogs.”
“You seriously can’t figure out why a computer named God is making a bunch of frogs?” Everyone looked at Jack. “Frogs are the second plague. God is stockpiling frogs because it’s a fucking plague,” he yelled.
The girl set a cup in front of him. She dropped a die in and it bounced around uncomfortably. “Welcome to creation,” she said pushing the cup towards Jack.