I am the GodVolume II: The Question
Chuck went looking for the youngest entity on Saturday morning.
Not on his run — he had been found on his run last time, which had been the youngest entity's choice and its right, but finding was different from being found and this time Chuck was doing the finding and it was his choice and his right and he was precise about the distinction.
He went to the place between Wilson and the edge of everything — the space he had been going to since the Question arrived, the space where the thinking that was too large for kitchen tables could be done at the scale it required. He went there and he stood in it and he was present in the way he had been learning to be present — not monitoring, not assessing, not running the comprehensive inventory. Simply present.
He waited.
The youngest entity arrived in three minutes.
"You found me," it said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's different from last time."
"Yes," Chuck said. "I have something for you."
The youngest entity was quiet in the specific way of something that has been waiting for a long time and has just heard the words it was waiting for and is now, in the moment of hearing them, feeling the full weight of the wait.
"The answer," it said.
"Part of it," Chuck said. "The part I have. The part I've lived toward."
"Is it enough?"
"I don't know," Chuck said. "But it's honest. And I think honest is the requirement."
"Tell me," the youngest entity said.
Chuck told it.
The narrator will not reproduce the telling in full because the full telling belongs to Chuck and the youngest entity in the space between Wilson and the edge of everything on a Saturday morning in March and because the full telling has already been assembled, piece by piece, across fifteen chapters of a second volume and does not require reassembly.
What the narrator will record is the shape of the telling.
Chuck told it about the pipe.
He told it about Marcus.
He told it about names and weight and right jobs and willingness and the cost of showing up.
He told it about gravity renegotiated — not the mechanics, but the meaning. What it felt like to be in the path of things instead of above them. What the rain felt like. What the fall on Elm and Third had felt like, lying on the road looking at the grey sky, getting up with the world not watching.
He told it about the truck and the cups and the fence and the spiral moving toward the center of what you are without arriving and the becoming that was continuous and the fact that a finished answer would be the end of the point.
He told it about the between.
"The between is the answer," he said. "Not the things. The space between the things that are becoming. Where the names are and the weight is and the cost is paid. Where one thing becoming meets another thing becoming and the meeting is where all of it happens. The relationship. The in-between."
The youngest entity was quiet for a long time.
Longer than the narrator had heard it be quiet.
"The between," it said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's why—" The youngest entity stopped.
"Say it," Chuck said.
"That's why we couldn't find it," the youngest entity said. "The answer. We were looking at you. At Chuck Norris. The phenomenon. The entity. The thing that negotiated with gravity."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"We were looking at one side of the between," the youngest said. "And the answer was in the space between you and—"
"A plumber in Wilson, Texas," Chuck said.
The youngest entity was quiet again.
"The answer to a question from outside the universe," it said slowly, "was in a kitchen in Wilson, Texas."
"Part of it," Chuck said. "The part I could reach."
"And the part you couldn't reach?"
"The part that's still becoming," Chuck said. "The part that will keep becoming after I've given what I have. The answer isn't finished. It will never be finished. That's the answer."
The youngest entity absorbed this.
"That's recursive," it said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "The answer to the Question contains the reason the answer can never be complete. They're the same thing."
"And the Question—"
"Will receive it the way things receive what they were always asking for," Chuck said. "Not with resolution. With recognition."
The space between Wilson and the edge of everything was quiet.
The youngest entity was present in it — fully present, the way it had not been fully present in either of the previous two meetings. Those meetings had been about Chuck Norris. This space was about the answer. And the answer was present in the space and the youngest entity could feel it the way you feel something true when you are in proximity to it — not because it is stated but because it is there.
"I need to tell the others," the youngest entity said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The oldest entity—"
"Will understand," Chuck said.
"How do you know?"
"Because the oldest entity has been in the between longer than anything," Chuck said. "It's existed since before the conditions. The between is all it's ever known. It will recognize the answer."
The youngest entity considered this.
"And the entity with the theological literature," it said.
"Will argue with it," Chuck said.
"Yes," the youngest said.
"That's alright," Chuck said. "Arguing with it is also the between. The argument is part of the becoming."
The youngest entity was quiet.
Then it said: "When do we bring it outside?"
"Not yet," Chuck said.
"When?"
"There are three more chapters in this volume," Chuck said.
The youngest entity paused.
"I'm sorry?" it said.
"Something will happen," Chuck said. "In the next few weeks. Something that will — deepen the answer. Put weight in it that it doesn't have yet. I can feel it coming."
"What will happen?"
"I don't know exactly," Chuck said. "Something with Marcus. Something that will cost me in a way I haven't been asked to pay yet."
"How do you know it's coming?"
Chuck thought about how to answer.
He thought about the Question and how it had arrived not before he was ready but exactly when he was ready. He thought about the route and the migration and the encoded thing. He thought about how nothing in this account had arrived before it was needed and nothing had arrived after it was needed and the timing had always been exactly the timing it was.
"Because the answer isn't complete yet," he said. "I can feel the incompleteness. Like a fitting that holds but is still getting old. The valve my father—" He stopped. "The valve Marcus's father — the thing that's not yet a problem but will be."
"You feel the weight that isn't there yet," the youngest said.
"I feel the weight that's coming," Chuck said. "I've been learning to feel it. From a plumber."
The youngest entity was quiet.
"You're asking me to wait," it said.
"I'm asking you to let the becoming finish what it needs to finish," Chuck said.
"And then—"
"Then I'll come to you," Chuck said. "And we'll go together to the edge. And you'll help me bring it through."
"Through the edge," the youngest said. "To the outside."
"Yes."
"You think I can do that."
"I think you're the one who can," Chuck said. "The one who asked like Marcus asked. Directly. The one who got tired of waiting and did the right thing."
The youngest entity absorbed this.
"You're saying I'm the one because I became the one," it said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "The becoming qualified you. Not the age. Not the power. The specific thing you did — asking directly, acknowledging the mistake, going to find me on the run."
"The between," the youngest said.
"The between," Chuck confirmed. "Between you and me. On a road in Texas at four thirty in the morning. That's where you became the one who could do this."
The youngest entity was quiet for a long time.
Then it said: "I'll wait."
"Thank you," Chuck said.
"Chuck," the youngest said.
"Yes."
"What you said about the others — the oldest entity recognizing it, the entity with the theological literature arguing with it."
"Yes."
"The arguing is the between," the youngest said. "The argument between us and the answer — that's us becoming the entities that can bring it outside."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"So we should argue."
"Extensively," Chuck said. "And honestly. And without resolution. The resolution comes later."
"When you come to us."
"When I come to you," Chuck said.
The youngest entity left.
Chuck stood in the space between Wilson and the edge of everything for a moment.
He thought about what he had said.
Something will happen. Something with Marcus. Something that will cost me.
He had said it with the calm directness he brought to everything and it was true — he could feel the incompleteness in the answer, the specific quality of something not quite finished — but in the space after saying it the feeling of it arrived differently.
Not the intellectual assessment of an incomplete answer.
The specific human anticipation of something that would hurt.
He stood in the space and felt it.
Not with resistance.
With willingness.
He was willing.
He was also — the narrator wrote it plainly — afraid.
Not the afraid of someone who does not know how to handle what is coming. The afraid of someone who knows exactly what is coming and knows that knowing does not make it easier. The afraid that is the honest response to the cost of something that matters.
He stood with it.
He had been learning to stand with things.
This was the largest thing he had stood with yet.
He stood with it for the time it required.
Then he went back to Wilson.
Marcus was in the driveway when Chuck got back.
He was washing the truck — not because it was dirty, specifically, but the way people wash things that matter to them on a Saturday morning when they have time. Carefully. With attention. The way you attend to the things you want to keep.
He looked up when Chuck came down the street.
"You went somewhere," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "I told the youngest entity."
Marcus held the hose.
"The answer," he said.
"The part I have," Chuck said.
"And?"
"It will wait," Chuck said. "Until I have the rest."
"The rest," Marcus said. "The part that's still becoming."
"Yes."
Marcus looked at him.
The facility ran.
It read the system.
"Something's coming," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You're not going to tell me what," Marcus said.
"I don't know exactly," Chuck said. "I know it's coming. I can feel the weight of it approaching."
Marcus was quiet.
He looked at the truck.
He looked at the hose in his hand.
He looked at Chuck.
"Is it something I should know about?" he said.
"Not yet," Chuck said. "When it arrives you'll know."
"You'll be here?"
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus nodded.
He looked at the truck.
"You want to help?" he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus handed him the second cloth — there was a second cloth on the hood of the truck, which had been there because Marcus had been washing the truck and had two hands and used two cloths and did not know yet why he had put it there as though expecting someone.
He had put it there because he had seen Chuck coming down the street.
He had not known he had seen him.
He had put it there anyway.
Chuck picked up the cloth.
They washed the truck.
The Saturday morning continued around them — the town doing its Saturday things, a dog somewhere, the smell of someone cooking something in a house nearby, the specific quality of a morning that had no agenda and was itself because of it.
They washed the truck and said nothing for a long time.
Then Marcus said: "The between."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"This is the between," Marcus said. "Right now. Washing the truck."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The answer is here right now," Marcus said. "In the washing the truck."
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus ran the cloth along the door panel.
"My father washed this truck every Saturday," he said.
"I know," Chuck said.
"I stopped for a while after he died," Marcus said. "Then I started again."
"The Sunday walk," Chuck said.
"The Sunday walk," Marcus confirmed. "The Saturday wash. The Tuesday morning call. All the same thing."
"The between that continues," Chuck said. "Between him and you. Still happening. Even now."
"Even now," Marcus said.
They washed the truck.
The truck was clean before they finished.
They finished anyway.
The third meeting of the upper registers happened on Saturday afternoon.
The narrator was not present — the narrator is never present in the upper registers meetings, it knows of them through what they produce, through the texture of the awareness that moves through the upper registers and registers itself in the monitoring that Chuck maintains and which now, since the gravity renegotiation, is monitoring rather than controlling.
But the narrator knows what happened.
The youngest entity told the assembly what Chuck had told it.
The oldest entity was quiet for a long time.
Then it said: "The between."
"Yes," the youngest said.
The oldest entity was quiet again.
Then it said, in the tone of something that has existed since before the conditions and has just been told the name for what it has been experiencing for that entire time: "Yes."
Just: yes.
The entity with the theological literature argued.
It argued for two hours.
The argument was honest and thorough and covered every objection that could be raised to an answer that was incomplete by design and recursive by nature and which pointed at a kitchen in Wilson, Texas as the location of the key insight.
The youngest entity answered every objection.
The answers were not resolutions. They were — the becoming. The argument between the entity with the theological literature and the youngest entity was itself the between, the space between one position and another where the understanding grew.
At the end of two hours the entity with the theological literature said: "I still have objections."
"Good," the youngest entity said. "Keep them. Bring them to the edge. They'll make the answer heavier when we carry it through."
The entity with the theological literature was quiet.
"Heavier is better?" it said.
"Weight is the point," the youngest said. "You've been listening. You know that."
The entity with the theological literature looked at the assembled meeting.
It looked at the oldest entity, which had said yes and nothing further and which was present in the meeting with the quality of something that has found, after a very long time, the word for what it has always known.
It looked at the unnamed entities.
It looked at the youngest.
"Alright," it said.
The meeting noted this word.
The word had a history in this account.
The narrator recognized it.
Alright.
The meeting dispersed.
The upper registers returned to their various operations.
The waiting resumed.
But it was different waiting now.
Not the waiting of entities that did not want to knock on a door.
The waiting of entities that were becoming, in the waiting, the ones who would be able to carry what they would be asked to carry.
The between.
Even in the upper registers.
Even there.
Saturday evening Chuck ate dinner at Marcus's.
Marcus made something he called a stew which was not exactly a stew but had the qualities of one — warm, made from what was available, the specific meal of someone who has been fed by their own cooking for long enough that the cooking is an expression of their character rather than a recipe.
It was very good.
"This is very good," Chuck said.
"My father's recipe," Marcus said. "More or less. He didn't write it down. I've been reconstructing it for eight years."
"How close are you?"
"Close," Marcus said. "Not there yet."
"Becoming," Chuck said.
"Becoming," Marcus confirmed.
They ate.
The evening was the evening.
The kitchen was the kitchen.
The between was everywhere in it.
The narrator recorded it all.
The narrator found it sufficient.
Not complete.
Not finished.
The right kind of sufficient — the sufficient of something still becoming what it was, still moving toward the center of what it was, still in the between between what it had been and what it would be.
Sufficient.
"Chuck," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"The thing that's coming."
"Yes."
"When it comes," Marcus said, "you'll tell me."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Before it happens," Marcus said. "Not after."
"I'll tell you when I can," Chuck said. "I don't know the timing."
Marcus looked at him.
"I'm not asking for warning," he said. "I'm asking for — the between. Whatever is coming. I want to be in the between with you. Not told about it after."
Chuck looked at him.
"Yes," he said.
"Okay," Marcus said.
"Okay," Chuck said.
They finished dinner.
They sat at the table longer than the dinner required because the table was the place and the evening was the time and neither of them was in a hurry because hurry was not what the between required.
What the between required was presence.
They were present.
The Question was present.
The answer was almost enough.
Almost.
The narrator turned toward the final two chapters of Volume II.
The weight was coming.
The narrator was willing.