Birth

Not long after this journal entry was written, a couple miles away Charles and Spencer were sitting down to their first day of collaborative work. Charles had woken up earlier than usual and put on a suit and tie. Spencer had worn the same clothes as the day before, and had started off the day with a bong rip.
“Well, how are you doing?” Charles asked Spencer as he emerged from his bedroom in sartorial excellence.
“Good. You want?” Spencer said, holding out the bong.
“I don’t see how that’s going to help matters,” Charles said, lifting up his coffee cup in emphasis.
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
“You mean, you will take a bong rip?”
“No, I mean, I will suit myself. Fuck it, you’re right.” Charles sat down and took a hit and sunk back into the couch.
The two of them sat there like that for several seconds.
“We’re not getting much work done yet.” Charles said.
“Maybe it’s a good idea to brainstorm.” Spencer offered.
“Good point. We have to construct a philosophy for this book.”
“What are you trying to say with it?” Spencer asked.
“That I exist. That there was a person who was me, who thought these thoughts.”
“So you don’t believe anyone else exists?” Spencer challenged
“No, I believe everyone else exists in tandem,” Charles clarified
“In relation to you, though, in tandem,” Spencer continued
“Yes, you’re getting to the crux of it.”
“So what am I going to type on?”
“You’ll type on my computer,” Charles said, “Since it is my history, and I will be dictating it, and you are merely the instrument through which my words will be manufactured.”
“Why aren’t you typing it yourself?”
“Well two reasons. Number one, I think having you here is useful not only for transmission, but also for confession. And number two, you need work, so I am giving you work. You’re earning as we speak.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you, because the importance of your being here is really my prime motivation.”
“You wouldn’t get this done if I weren’t available for this occupation.”
“Exactly, and this is why we should begin now.”
“Okay.” Spencer opened up Charles’s laptop and opened up a word processor. “What do you want the title to be?”
“I already told you. The title is ‘Pure Possibility.”’
“Chapter One?” Spencer asked.
“When I was born, I was not so much born as I was inappropriately pushed. My mother had been told that the birth was going to be a difficult ordeal, and it would be better if they could perform an operation to make the process more smooth. No one asked me, of course, whether I was okay with this. At the next moment, a pair of alien hands grasped me and pulled me out onto an empty white sheet. My first moments of life—could there be any more meaningful time?”
“Do you want those last two parts as one sentence with a dash, or two sentences?”
“One with a dash,” Charles answered.
“We should probably talk about grammar.”
“Write it as closely as you can get it to the way I am speaking it,” Charles conceded.
“Don’t hesitate anymore. Just let it all spill out.” Spencer encouraged.
“I was placed into a crib, and my mother held me often. I learned how to cry, and I learned how to eat, and I learned how to make bad feelings go away. My favorite toy was a baby bird which rattled. It was nothing so simple as a rattle, and nothing so simple as a stuffed animal. The combination mesmerized me. It was my first successful exploration of the anthropomorphic concept. What I held, in its predictability, and in the way I could control it, became part of me. The bird-rattle did not have a mind of its own, and I could make the bird appear to be pecking at food on the floor or singing a song of tiny tinkling beans. I learned what it meant to create strange noises, and what it meant to behave as a human, and as a bird. One might argue that the original toy itself was my single greatest education—to learn what it was to rattle, and to discern what it was to be bird-like. I soon began to notice real birds outside, which looked quite different from my little plaything. Strangely, they were even smaller in fact and not as easily petted. They flew of their own accord. They sang in a very recognizable and ubiquitous rhythm and pitch. They moved for reasons I could not understand.”
“More importantly, I learned how to crawl, and then to walk, and once I could walk, I learned how to talk, and then I began to understand what words meant, and how one word could easily overshadow another, as long as what it meant was more menacing. The word ‘death,’ for example, entered my vocabulary at an early age, and as I gradually began to grasp what it meant, I asked my mother if I would die, and she told me I would not, and that I would go to heaven. Heaven was a concept more difficult for me to grasp than death, and I would only believe in it for about ten more years.”
“Are you stopping there?” Spencer asked.
“This is much harder than I thought,” Charles answered. “I feel like I am self-editing before the real editing should begin.”
“Maybe then that’s being responsible?” Spencer questioned.
“Yes, let’s stop for a while then. Go mark your hours on that poster over there. You can count this as one”
Charles had created a poster for Spencer to fill in his hours taking dictation. Spencer was surprised to see that the dates only went as far as November—Thanksgiving.
“Do you expect to finish this in one month?”
“I expect new things to be revealed every day. And that poster is only a guideline.”