Fallen Between the Quarks I
I have previously alerted you to the fact that those of One are sending messages along their modified rays dispersed by instantaneously transferring an object travelling at the speed of sound to the speed of light. Of installations regarding the message and those consequences of receiving them, this is the first. The first message was, as most are, quite professional, stating name, business, reason for the message, et cetera. This one, written by a collective of scientists who decided that each scientist would have a turn writing the message themselves after this premier, declared as so:
Salutations!
We are a collective of scientists working for a company known as Pan’s Door, a company that seeks to better the world by enabling energy deficient constructs with top of the line energy resources. We of Pan’s Door wish you no malice or distress; we merely wish to understand how the world functions. Thus, we ask that you who receive our messages send a message in response as to the effects our ray has had upon your place of dwelling, as well as what galaxy you reside in. May you have great, splendid, energy efficient lives!
— Pan’s Door, Research and Development Division
Naturally there were many other things added to this missive, such as galactic address, an alphabet in every single language upon their world, and the star date… whatever they deemed necessary to be said in an introductory statement, the scientists of Pan’s Door placed in this message before sending off the ray and awaiting a response. They planned to send out another message at least once a week, just to make sure that someone or something could reply in kind and know that this was not a one-time thing.
Let us, now, follow the ray on its journey, skipping between the quarks and landing in Two, where there was one existence, one being whose entire life – could one call it that – was centred on sending the messages from One to Three. And it, sensing that its task must be rendered complete, its purpose to be served, did as such. The ray, having entered Two with as much force as that with which it was rebounded, felt weak, and as such, crumbled, splitting off into – much to the glee of the universe it was entering, for it could now exist as it was meant to, as decided by itself – three parts. Such a divergence had been unforeseen by One, who never considered it a really viable thing to consider. Three, having decided that its chance to exist as it was meant to, chose those preselected denizens of itself and placed in their heads bits of the message that were contained in a once more wholesome manner within the ray that, as I’ve said before, was redirected from Two and into Three.
The first was a young woman. Perhaps she was more susceptible to the hummings of the universe due to her musical background; she played in an orchestra that was quite successful, second seat for the cello. She could be described as beautiful. The first seat cellist would agree with the adjective, as would the fourth viola. The third bass, their mind tainted by the refusal from the second cello to go out on a date, would argue that her beauty was quite marred by her lack of openness regarding sexual orientation.
Perhaps you would think her beautiful, reader, with her hair the colour of fire brick, streaked with, due to her genetic material, shiny copper; with her drooping eyes, a metallic firegold; with her skin the colour of cream with barely noticeable streams of blueberry.
Perhaps you’d rather define beauty as wise creatures do, with the quality of the deemed. Should this be the case, let it be known that this young woman has an intelligence quite high amongst her peers, that she is humble yet firm in her dealings with people, that she knows she has skill but chooses to refrain from acting as if she does even though it would be natural to do so at age twenty-five, that she reads poetry, finds both men and women extremely attractive but occasionally prefers the former, that she creates musical playlists on her computer for certain moods, that she can be very silly when given the chance, and finds wordplay ten times as magnificent and brutal than swordplay could ever hope to be.
Perhaps you find her beautiful; perhaps you agree with the third bass; perhaps you find her negligible; perhaps you find that she does not exist. The latter two, however, you must accept as false, for you now know of her, and thus she has an important existence relative to even your universe, reader.
The first was a young woman. Her name was Olivia Carver. She loved camellias.
The second was a tortured man. His mind, being open to nothing but despair and irrationality, was quite susceptible to receiving messages from the universe in any way they came. And so, the murder of his wife and three children became a boon, of sorts, a gift bestowed upon him by the universe so the universe could maintain its existence. He, however, saw it not as a gift, but a means of which he earned the right to hate life, to devalue it beyond the hope he once sought to maintain in others and now held worthless. He once worked for an engineering company, was the overseer for the division responsible for actually building things. That was before he found his family dead, however, before he realized that he was capable of truly terrible things, before he found himself strolling the line between madness and mourning.
His name was George Castriani, and he was forty-six years old when the message entered his subconscious and helped him move past the grief caused by the unsolved murder case that was his wife and three children. Yes, forty-six years old, with sandy blonde hair, the build of a construction worker, and the thoughtful mind of a strategist whose eyes reflect the durability of his will: hard steel. The door to his home had a carving of a fennel.
The third was a kind young man by the name of August Lapin, a creative young gentleman. He worked at a bar in the evenings, and during the day was oft seen around art museums or walking about the city or talking with strangers or playing guitar or writing poems or attending college or attending one of the free concerts the city orchestra would perform and cleaning after the show. Most people merely knew him as a gentleman, a young man who was very helpful and philosophical, a pretty nice lad, a person who could go places, a person who would see the world, and more – a person who would understand the universe. Such magnificent things to be expected of a nineteen-year-old, surely, such marvellous things! He felt none the pressure, though. He cared not for most of what others had to say in terms of his own conduct, lest they associate such mishaps with themselves; he would clear up those misunderstandings immediately.
Perhaps ‘tis due to his expansive mind, a mind so open there were no walls but space to fill, yet a mind so full one could argue it oversaturated, that he, too, received a part of that message sent along a ray and rebounded into splinters. Perhaps ‘tis due to the rowan that offered him shade every afternoon the sun was out to play.
It was roughly around noon that each of these three received their part of the message. Olivia Carver, interrupted by the thought the message appeared as, slipped up on her warm up, the thought of a door belonging to Pan straying into her thoughts. She grinned, liking the sound her cello made due to the mishap, her deeper mind wondering what could be combined with it to create the soundtrack of Pan’s Door. George Castriani, caught in a memory at the time, found himself contemplating how to send a message back to the universe that stole his family away and locked them with Death. August Lapin, reclining so that his head, back, and legs were supported by his favourite tree, began to wonder how one went about living a full life, devoid of waste and excess, an efficient and fulfilling life.