The Question or the Answer

One hundred and eleven dollars and thirteen cents. That’s all I had left.

“Ten, eleven, twelve aand thirteen.” The woman behind the glass counted out the pennies and slid my money towards me. “Thank you, have a nice day.” She didn’t even look up at me as she said it.

I picked up my money and folded away the bills, dropping all the coins but one penny into a donation jar on the counter. Turning to the door my eyes quickly glanced up at the calendar hanging on one of the hideously drab oatmeal coloured walls. Tuesday. It always happened on a Tuesday.

The sun warmed my face, a nice change from the frosty air conditioning inside the bank. I stood there on the sidewalk for a while looking up at the sky. The clouds were still far from the sun. That was good, I still had some time then. I don’t know why that reassured me, I had nowhere to go. My landlord had evicted me, I had no money and most of the people I know were already ‘gone’. We’re not supposed to use the word abducted. They prefer gone. I think it implies that it was sort of a choice though so generally I avoided talking about these things in the first place.

I finally decided I would go left because there was a nice little park with lots of trees that may offer me some privacy which was hard to come by these days. It was common knowledge that we were being watched. You never knew when they were watching but you could be sure they didn’t miss much. Most of us avoid looking up at the sky for too long. All the people who had a habit of gazing at the moon or the stars had ‘left’ first. The word ‘taken’ was another taboo in this context. Apparently in the past people who tried to report the abductions were laughed at and ridiculed. But at least back then most of them were returned. Now it was rare to hear of someone who had been brought back and even if they were they were not the same. Just a body. An empty vessel if you ask me.

On my way to the park I stopped at a corner store to pick up a notebook and pen. The urge to write had washed over me so strongly I felt I had no choice but to comply. I set the book and pen down on the counter and reached for my wallet. When I pulled it from my coat a single leaf of paper, no bigger than the palm of my hand, fluttered out and landed on the counter.

Do you know?

That’s all it read.

“Leaving today?” Asked the cashier, noticing the paper. I gave a small nod and quickly tucked the paper back into my pocket.

“I remember when my wife got hers.” He nodded to where the paper had been. “She got all quiet and nervous at first, like you, but by the time the clouds came she was as cheery as a July sun. The way she saw it, they don’t take just anybody and if they asked her the question then she would do her best to answer.”

I looked at the T.V, not wanting to be rude and interrupt but frankly not giving a damn about what the man was saying. Channel 51 was on – the usual. A cool female voice read off the names of those who had recently left while a slideshow of patterns drawn in cornfields played on the screen. The translations ran across the bottom. They were all thank you messages of sorts. It seemed rather forced to me.

“Anyways, pip up! You must know something worth knowing if they’ve chosen you.” He smiled as he counted out my change.

“Keep it.” I turned to leave.

“I hope you know!” the cashier said after me. This had become the standard goodbye people used when someone was leaving. Pointless really. How could you know the answer to a question you didn’t understand?

I finally reached the park and settled down under a large tree shielding me almost fully from the sky. I opened the notebook to find it had already been written in. Do you know? Without hesitation I wrote directly underneath it.

‘I know some things, but I don’t know a great many more.’

A ray of sunlight broke through the leaves and touched the page I was writing on. Those same three words appeared again underneath what I had written. I didn’t write anything for a while as I sorted through the thoughts in my head. A draught of wind had closed up the gap in the branches and I once again sat in shadow, shielded from the sky. I felt like I was truly alone with my thoughts. A rare privilege nowadays. My initial answers to the question seemed elementary. Anything I knew about mathematics, science, history, culture and the like they undoubtedly already knew and knew better than I. They probably even knew a great many of my personal details, my name, my age, my parents, relationships I had had. It seemed they already knew more than I so what they were asking must be for something deeper. Something that exists only in my own mind. Something I’ve never spoken nor written anywhere, not even betrayed by a twitch of my face; simply carried with me always. So was that it? What was that kernel that made me without a doubt me? My soul? Physical entity or not I knew we all had one. I knew that body and soul could exist as separate entities yet that those two entities needed each other to function properly. Not just any body and any soul either- a body you were born in. One you saw and felt grow and shaped and help shaped you. I looked up. The clouds had crept closer to the sun. I was running out of time.

Do you know?

Maybe they were asking about the meaning of life. An answer that’s been tirelessly pursued by people since the beginning of time. Though if they didn’t know it seemed fruitless to ask us. I smiled. The irony was laughable. We finally find the “big man in the sky” so to speak and instead of giving answers he asks the questions. It felt like a test. Or an experiment. And then I knew. I knew they weren’t looking for an answer at all. They already had it. They were looking to see if we had found it yet.

A cool female voice echoed around me from the speakers hidden everywhere. ‘Those with tickets please find their way to the nearest pick up location. Thank you for your cooperation.’ Her voice made the hair on my arms stand straight. We all knew what happened to those who didn’t cooperate. I stood and brushed the grass off of myself and started towards the nearest assembly point. When I got there, there was just one other person sitting on the bench. She glanced at me as I came up. She had her dog with her. The sun was low in the sky and the clouds creeped ever closer. I saw a woman walking towards us from down the street. It was the woman whose voice had made my hair stand up every time I heard it. I’d never seen her before but I knew it would be her. The grey evening light made everything look sad and dreary. I wondered if I would remember any of this. She had almost reached us and the edge of the clouds was just a hair away from covering the sun. In that moment I knew two things with absolute certainty. I knew the end was approaching for me and I knew the answer to the question. I smiled again at the irony. Getting destroyed by something we came up with in the first place – time. The woman finally reached us and the sun was now completely blocked by a thick wall of clouds. She smiled. Even her smile gave me goosebumps.

“Welcome to the end. Do you know?”