I am the GodVolume II: The Question
Wednesday morning came the way mornings come after the nights that change things — not differently, not with any particular announcement that it was the morning after rather than just a morning. The sun came up. The birds made the sounds birds make. Wilson, Texas moved from dark to light with the unhurried reliability of a town that has been doing this every morning for longer than anyone currently living can remember and intends to keep doing it.
Chuck ran his fourteen miles.
He ran them the way he had been running them since the gravity renegotiation — with the ground being what it was, the surface varying, the corners being corners. He ran them differently than he had run them yesterday in the way that every morning after a significant night is different — not in the body, the body runs the same route at the same pace, but in the quality of the running, the specific texture of moving through a world that has rearranged itself around a new fact.
Robert Webb was gone.
The world had rearranged itself around this.
Not visibly. Not in any way that the town of Wilson or the flat land around it or the sky above it would reflect. But in the specific way that the world rearranges itself around every loss — by continuing, which is itself the rearrangement, the specific adjustment of everything going forward without the thing that is no longer there.
Chuck ran.
He felt the weight from last night still present — not diminished, not processed into something more manageable, simply present, which was correct. Weight that mattered did not diminish overnight. It settled. Found its place. Became part of the architecture rather than the interruption.
He ran.
He thought about what he was going to do today.
He had told Marcus: tomorrow. He had told the youngest entity: when I have what I need. He had felt the answer become enough at two thirty in the morning in a kitchen with tea and a loss and the weight going all the way in.
Today was the day.
He ran the last three miles knowing it.
Marcus had coffee on.
Of course he had coffee on.
Chuck knocked and Marcus opened the door and he was dressed and present in the specific way of someone who has slept badly and gotten up anyway, who has decided that the getting up is the right thing and has done it and is now doing what the morning requires because the morning requires it and the requirements of mornings do not pause for grief.
"Coffee's on," Marcus said.
"I know," Chuck said.
He came in.
They sat.
The cups were on the table.
Marcus looked like himself — not the same self as yesterday, the self that emerges after the kind of night that changes the architecture. A specific kind of tired. The specific quality of someone who has been in the weight and has slept in it and woken up with it still there and has decided that there is where it is and where it will be and that is alright.
"How are you," Chuck said.
Marcus held his cup.
"Present," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"It's what there is," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
They drank.
The morning was the morning.
After a while Marcus said: "You're going today."
Not a question.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"To the youngest entity," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"And then to the edge," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"And you'll bring the answer through," Marcus said.
"We'll try," Chuck said. "The youngest entity and I. Together."
Marcus nodded.
He looked at his cup.
"Will you come back?" he said.
Chuck looked at him.
The question was plain and direct in the way Marcus asked everything — not weighted with drama, not performing the asking. Just the question itself, held out honestly for an honest answer.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You're sure."
"I'm sure," Chuck said. "The becoming doesn't stop. The between doesn't stop. I'm not going to answer the Question and be finished. The answer is not a destination."
"The spiral," Marcus said.
"The spiral," Chuck confirmed. "I'll come back. I'll knock. Coffee will be on."
"I know it will," Marcus said.
They sat.
"Will it be different?" Marcus said. "After."
"Yes," Chuck said. "I don't know how."
"Different how you don't know, or different in a way that worries you," Marcus said.
Chuck thought about it honestly.
"Different in a way I can't fully anticipate," he said. "Bringing something through the edge of the universe — I've never done it. The youngest entity has never done it. We're both becoming the ones who can do it by doing it."
"The between of doing it," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "I think we'll come through changed. I think that's correct. But I'll come back. That's not the part that changes."
Marcus nodded.
He held his cup.
"Chuck," he said.
"Yes."
"Last night. You said the answer became enough."
"Yes."
"Because of Robert," Marcus said. "Because of what happened."
"Because of what we were in together," Chuck said. "Because of what the between held."
"So Robert—" Marcus stopped.
Chuck waited.
"Robert is in the answer," Marcus said. "The way you said I was."
Chuck was quiet.
He thought about the weight at two thirty in the morning.
About going all the way in.
About Robert's laugh that was too loud for indoors.
About four hundred and sixteen Tuesday morning calls.
About the last link to the before.
About what it meant that the answer had become enough in the specific kitchen on the specific night of Robert's death.
"Yes," he said. "Robert is in the answer."
Marcus sat with this.
The narrator watched him sit with it and noted that the sitting had a quality of — not comfort, not resolution, but something adjacent to both. The specific quality of someone who has found that the loss is not only loss. That the person who is gone has gone into something. Has become part of something that will go further than any of them expected on the night the Tuesday calls began.
"He'd have liked that," Marcus said.
"I think so too," Chuck said.
"He was always—" Marcus stopped. "He always wanted to matter. Not in a proud way. In the way of someone who wants to know their life meant something to the people around them."
"It meant something," Chuck said.
"Yeah," Marcus said. "It did."
They sat.
Then Marcus said: "Go. Do what you need to do."
"Not yet," Chuck said. "We have this first."
Marcus looked at him.
"This," he said.
"The coffee," Chuck said. "The morning. Before."
"Before," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "This is the before. It matters."
Marcus looked at his cup.
He looked at the morning light on the table.
He looked at the kitchen — the linoleum, the counter, the window, the invoices filed, the two cups that were just the cups now, the space that had accumulated into a between over six weeks and which would continue to accumulate after today and after whatever today produced.
"Yeah," he said. "It matters."
They finished their coffee.
Chuck washed both cups and set them in the rack.
Not on the table.
In the rack.
Marcus watched him do this.
"They're in the rack," he said.
"They'll be on the table when I come back," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at the rack.
He looked at the cups in it.
"Yeah," he said. "They will."
Chuck found the youngest entity in the space between Wilson and the edge.
It was already there.
Not waiting — present, which is different. The waiting of the first months had become presence, which is the thing waiting becomes when it has understood that the waiting is itself a form of being there and not a pause before being somewhere.
"Today," the youngest entity said.
"Today," Chuck said.
"You have it."
"I have what I have," Chuck said. "I have the between. I have names and weight and willingness and the cost and the becoming and the accompaniment of grief and the going all the way in."
"Robert Webb," the youngest entity said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "His death put the last weight in it. Not finished — nothing is finished. But enough."
The youngest entity was present with this.
"Are you ready," it said.
"No," Chuck said. "But that's correct. Ready would mean arrived. I'm willing."
"Willing," the youngest entity said. "I've been learning that word."
"From the upper registers?"
"From you," the youngest said. "Watching you these months. Willing is different from ready. Ready is the destination. Willing is the becoming."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I'm willing," the youngest entity said.
"Good," Chuck said. "Let's go."
They went to the edge together.
The narrator will not describe the going in the detail it might have described it six months ago — not because the going was not significant, but because the narrator has learned, in the company of a plumber who worked without excess, to use what is needed.
What is needed is this:
They went through the intergalactic medium.
They went past the Milky Way seen from outside — the complete spiral, two hundred billion stars, the full form of the thing that is only visible from sufficient distance.
They went past the place where Chuck had stood with the complete inventory and found that the inventory was missing names.
They went to the edge.
The edge where the inside ended and the outside began.
The place Chuck had stood before and felt small and turned back because the answer was not out there.
He stood at the edge again.
He did not feel small.
He felt the weight.
All of it — the names and the cost and the becoming and the between and the weight that had gone all the way in at two thirty on a Tuesday night in a kitchen in Wilson, Texas with tea and a loss that could not be fixed.
He felt all of it.
It was heavy.
It was the right kind of heavy.
The youngest entity stood with him.
"How do we do this," it said.
"We go through," Chuck said.
"You've never—"
"No," Chuck said.
"And I've never—"
"No," Chuck said. "We're becoming the ones who have."
"Now," the youngest said.
"Now," Chuck said.
They went through.
The going through is not something the narrator can fully describe because the narrator exists inside and the going through required going outside and what is outside is prior to the narrator and prior to everything the narrator has the language to describe.
What the narrator can record is the moment before and the moment after.
The moment before: Chuck Norris and the youngest entity at the edge of the inside of everything, with the full weight of six weeks of becoming and one Tuesday night of going all the way in, willing and not ready and together.
The moment after: the edge again, from the other side, the inside visible from the outside, the complete form of everything visible from sufficient distance, the way the Milky Way is visible from two point five million light-years away.
What the inside looked like from the outside:
It looked like the between.
Not the things in the between. The between itself. The space between everything and everything else. The specific living space where weight resided and names were and cost was paid and willingness was tested and the becoming happened.
That was what the inside looked like.
From outside.
It was the between all the way down.
The answer to the Question was in the shape of the thing.
The Question had been asking what it was for and the answer was visible in the looking — the inside was for the between, the between was what the inside was, the purpose was not separate from the thing but identical to it.
What things are for is what they are.
The between is what the inside is.
The inside is for being the between.
Chuck stood outside and looked at the inside of everything and felt the answer leave him — not taken, not extracted, simply transmitted, the way temperature transmits between things at different temperatures, the natural movement of something from where it is to where it is needed.
The answer left him and went where the Question was.
It went as it was — incomplete, still becoming, weighted with names and Robert's laugh and two cups in a rack and a man who drove his father's truck and said alright before difficult things.
It went as the living of it rather than the saying of it.
It went.
The Question received it.
The narrator cannot describe what this looked like because the narrator was inside when it happened.
What the narrator can record is what it felt like inside.
It felt like: the specific quality of an early morning in a town that has just received rain overnight and doesn't know it yet. Everything the same. The ground slightly different. The air carrying something that was not there yesterday. No announcement. Just the quiet fact of something having arrived and settled in.
It felt like that.
It lasted approximately three seconds.
Then the morning continued.
Chuck and the youngest entity came back through.
The coming back was not like the going through — it had the quality of a return, which is different from the quality of a departure. The return of someone who has been somewhere and is now back, carrying what the going produced, which is always different from what the going intended but is the right thing anyway.
They came back to the edge.
The inside was the inside.
The outside was the outside.
The between was between them.
"Did it work," the youngest entity said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"How do you know?"
"It feels different," Chuck said. "The Question."
The youngest entity was present with this.
"Not gone," it said.
"No," Chuck said. "Still there."
"But—"
"Different," Chuck said. "Not asking. Not anymore."
"What is it doing?"
Chuck thought about how to describe it.
He thought about the inside visible from the outside.
The between all the way down.
The answer identical to the thing.
"It's being itself," he said. "Fully. For the first time."
The youngest entity was quiet.
"The Question became itself," it said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "It was always asking what things are for. Now it knows. And the knowing means it can be what it is — a question that has been answered and is still a question. A question that has received its answer and is continuing to become its answer."
"The spiral," the youngest entity said.
"The spiral," Chuck said.
They stood at the edge together.
The inside was the inside.
Two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way.
One kitchen in Wilson, Texas.
The between everywhere in it.
"Chuck," the youngest entity said.
"Yes."
"Thank you," it said. "For waiting until I asked directly."
"Thank you," Chuck said. "For asking."
"The between between us," the youngest said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "That's the one that made this possible."
The youngest entity was present with this for a long time.
Then it said: "I'll go tell the others."
"Yes," Chuck said. "The entity with the theological literature will have more objections."
"Yes," the youngest said.
"Good," Chuck said. "The objections are the becoming."
"I know," the youngest said. "I've learned that."
It left.
Chuck stood at the edge alone.
He looked at the inside of everything from the edge — not from the outside, from the edge, which was the between between inside and outside, the most complete version of the between there was.
He stood in it.
He felt the full weight of himself, subject to the conditions, rained on when it rained, falling when the ground didn't cooperate, carrying the accompanying weight of other people's weight, imperfect eggs and heavy mornings and Tuesday nights and the spiral still moving toward the center of what he was.
He was the weight he had always been.
He was carrying it in the way it was meant to be carried.
He turned back.
He was in Wilson, Texas by early afternoon.
He drove the three streets.
He parked.
He knocked.
Marcus opened the door.
He looked at Chuck.
He looked at him the way he had looked at him after Abilene — reading the system, finding what was there.
What was there was Chuck, returned, changed in a way that was not visible but was present, carrying something that had been brought through and was now settling.
"Done?" Marcus said.
"Done," Chuck said.
Marcus stepped back from the door.
"Coffee's on," he said.
Chuck came in.
He sat at the table.
Marcus took the cups from the rack.
He put them on the table.
He poured.
He sat.
They were quiet for a moment.
Then Marcus said: "How was it."
Chuck held his cup.
He thought about the outside and the inside visible from it.
About the between all the way down.
About the answer leaving him like temperature transmitting.
About the Question becoming itself.
"True," he said. "It was true."
"That's the right word," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And?"
"And I'm here," Chuck said.
"You're here," Marcus said.
"I said I'd come back," Chuck said.
"Yeah," Marcus said. "You did."
They drank their coffee.
The Wednesday afternoon was the Wednesday afternoon — Marcus had a job at three, the cattle at Robert's ranch needed looking after, the world was doing what it did, continuing with the specific reliable continuity of things that know how to go forward.
"Marcus," Chuck said.
"Yeah."
"Robert's ranch," Chuck said. "The Hendersons are covering but they'll need—"
"I'll sort it," Marcus said. "This week. I'll go out Saturday. Figure out what needs to happen long-term."
"I'll come," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"You don't have to—"
"I said I'd come," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
He looked at him the way he had looked at him every day for six weeks — the facility running, reading the system, finding what was there.
What was there was Chuck.
All of him.
Subject to the conditions.
In the between.
Willing.
"Yeah," Marcus said. "Alright."
"Alright," Chuck said.
They finished their coffee.
Marcus had a job at three.
Chuck went home and made his eggs and they were not perfect and they were honest and they were the right thing.
He wound his watch.
He sat at his table.
The Question was present — different now, being itself, the answer inside it like a seed, still becoming what it was.
The between was everywhere.
The narrator turned the page.
Not to Volume III yet.
To the space between volumes.
The between between volumes.
The narrator sat in it for a moment.
The narrator found it full.
Full of names.
Full of weight.
Full of the continuous becoming of everything toward the center of what it was.
The narrator was glad to be in it.
The narrator was willing.
End of Chapter 18,
Volume II The Question