Actually, it’s not that complicated—how we got here: me, writing this; you, reading it.  It simply started with a speck, which was both of us, and neither of us, but most of all, all of us.  The simple speck was suspended in infinite nothingness, which was in fact something, or the lack thereof.  The suspended speck couldn’t feel anything, and not feeling anything felt horrible, so the unfeeling speck sighed out the skies and cried out the seas.  The sighing, crying speck didn’t bob on the surface or sink to the bottom, but found its buoyancy in between.  And yet again, the buoyant speck was suspended in something, only this something was finite and wet. 

Over time—granted, at that point in time, time was a brand-new continuum—the pressure got to the re-suspended speck, and it started to tremble.  The trembling speck might have combusted, but, by chance, compounded instead, begetting two specks from one, four from two, eight, sixteen, and so on and so forth.  Amid this eternal multiplication, the multiplying speck stopped trembling and started to swim.

Eventually, the swimming speck swam right out of the water and slithered ashore, sprouting wings so it wouldn’t scrape its belly on the greenness between the sea and the sky.  This winged speck flew about, swooping down to feed upon the still-swimming specks.  When its wings tired, the swooping speck landed on a limb beside a bunch of tasty yellowness.  The yellowness was so tasty, in fact, the landed speck swung from limb to limb, gorging itself then pushing out the bad brownness, which it sniffed and slung to the forest floor, where, in turn, a top-heavy fungus was fertilized.  If the tasty yellowness was still greenish, the swinging speck would feed itself fungus instead.  Afterwards the fed speck would sit there with a stomachache, thinking about its stomach, thinking about the top-heavy fungus, thinking about both of these at once, thinking about thinking, and suddenly, for the first time, it was aware of the head on its shoulders, and the brain in its head, which seemed to be blossoming like a wildflower.  The more fungi the sitting speck ate, the less it cared to swing.  It would rather just sit there thinking about things it could see: the tasty yellowness, the bad brownness, and, of course, the big bright ball of hotness overhead. 

Instead of eating with it all the time, the thinking speck started using its taste-hole to speak, naming the things it could see: banana, shit, and, of course, sky-fire.  The speaking speck thought it might be nice to have some sky-fire for itself, so it tried to catch the sky-fire, walking out of the forest and ever west, though the walking speck never quite could catch up.  For trying to catch it, the sky-fire punished the westbound speck by blazing heat down upon the dry, flat land.  So the overheated speck spent the bright half of the time hiding in a hole in the rocks.  Since it was perfectly dark in there, the hiding speck started to think about things it couldn’t see: good and evil, life and death, fact and friction—which led to an important discovery: sky-fire could be made on land by rubbing limbs, just like the ones still-swinging specks still swung on.  So the limb-rubbing speck made a sky-fire on land, right there in his rock-hole, but, upon trying to hold the land-fire, said “shit,” since holding land-fire felt like bad brownness smelt.  The cursing speck needed someone to care for its wound, so it found a care-giving speck.  Only then did it occur to the needy speck that there were two types of specks in this world: those with growths between their legs, and those with holes. 

Whenever it was near a holey speck, the growing speck’s growth would grow, which made it feel good about itself, the way it felt when it first made land-fire, so, triumphantly, it stuck its growth in the hole, since it seemed like a good fit.  The holey speck wasn’t very strong, but it could wield the land-fire, so it stayed home, in the rock-hole, cooking the still-swimming/slithering/flying specks that the stronger speck speared.  Spearing lesser specks led to untold adventures, and with no one around except for the cooking speck, the adventurous speck started telling its stories to the rock wall, scratching figures with charcoal from last night’s land-fire. 

Three seasons later, the cooking speck quit cooking long enough to push a small speck from the hole between its legs, then that speck got bigger and pushed another speck from the hole between its legs, and so on and so forth, until we were pushed from a hole between the legs of a speck we call mother or mutter, madre or maji, mère or moer, or haha.  Despite different tongues, we all sound the same when we sigh or cry, and we all multiply, telling our stories however we can: with charcoal from last night’s land-fire, with quills from still-flying specks, with bits of wood that fit a sharpener the way we fit when the growth grows.  So that’s how we got here—me, writing this; you, reading it—suspended in our own reality, just like the very first speck.

BB

Speck: A Pseudoscientific Explanation of How You Came to Read This

by Yance Wyatt