Embedded Files
Part three
The white glow of the match room made apparent the layers of dust on Una’s black cloak. It revealed a large stain on the side of the Matchstick man’s gray, tattered jacket. Without knowing, it revealed a small spot of blood on Una’s shoe. It was not her own. The glow washed their faces; the light revealed pores and scars and imperfections, stray hairs and mottling. It showed the yellowing of their teeth. It did its best to reveal the Matchstick man’s old age and failed. It attempted to resurrect Una’s forgotten youth and failed at that too. It held the length, breadth and intensity of a stare, an instance of eye contact that for both parties was seemingly infinite.
“I’m sorry” the matchstick man said, unsure of what else to say. Una sniffled a little.
“Thank you.” she said. The words tumbled through her throat the way the first raindrop tumbles from a thunderstorm. Not that Una had ever seen a thunderstorm. She sat down, her back finding the mysterious and unexplainable glowing wall. She curled her legs against her chest and stared straight forward. The Matchstick man stood for a moment, then slowly joined her, coming to rest not far from her. Una was clearly having a terrible time. The matchstick man didn’t know exactly what to do with that information. They sat for a long moment.
“Why do bad things happen?” Una asked, still staring into apparent nothingness.
“I have no idea”. Answered the matchstick man. He was lying. They sat for another long moment.
“you look like you need to cry” said the matchstick man. His voice was husky and alien to Una. This was only the second time she had heard a man speak.
“yeah. I know” she responded. The matchstick man lost himself in thought for a moment.
“how about we go somewhere nice? To clear your head. I know a good spot.” She barely heard him. Her mind was still firing, still reeling. Black smoke and ash still billowed, blood still pooled at her feet.
“sure” she answered, clearly sounding unsure.
“wonderful!” said the matchstick man, feigning optimism. “Are you from Earth?”. She gave him a look of confusion, then remembered again that this was technically the first time they had met.
“Earth?” she said, phrasing the name like a question “No.” and, chuckling a little bit, “I don’t believe in fairy tales”. The matchstick man adopted a look of confusion, was taken aback for a moment before stating softly,
“Fairy tales? That is your home, you know.” He gave her a piercing look. She gave him a piercing stare. He realized quickly that home might be a touchy subject for her.
“My home is gone.” She said, resuming her distant stare and confirming the matchstick man’s suspicions. Her arms were suffocating her knees. He gave her the look that parents give their children when they don’t know what to say and feel terrible about it. He shuffled his feet and glanced away.
“Well” he began, still shuffling his feet “Earth is a really good place to cry”. Una looked to the matchstick man and remembered her first interaction with him. His all-knowing look, his compassion.
“Okay.” she said. “I’ve nothing better to do”. The matchstick man offered Una a hand and she took it, standing up and brushing a small amount of ash from her pants. The matchstick man opened his matchbook and pulled out a match, concentrating on it for a moment. A bubble of light rippled and expanded, distorting what little contrast and definition there was in the glowing white room. When the door was opened, he turned to Una.
“After you.” he said, flashing an unconvincing smile. She gave the portal an appraising look, and steeled herself, then took a step through time and space.
###
interlude
You may be wondering what went wrong. What could have possibly happened to Una? It seems terrible! She’s obviously having a rough time. But why? She asked our only available resource, the matchstick man, and he deliberately avoided telling her. What a situation! An unfortunate one, to be sure. It will take some time to fully understand. For now, let’s zoom out and examine the root of Una’s question: Why do bad things happen?
There have been many answers to this question, and I assure you that there will be many more to come in your relative future. The majority of these explanations can be fit into one of three categories:
1) Bad things happen because they do.
2) Bad things happen because (insert deity) wants them too for some reason they deem fit.
3) Bad things happen because you are a bad person.
Most people believe in option 1, with a significant portion of those people justifying this belief with options 2 and 3. Sometimes a person will go so far as shaming another person with a heinous option 2/3 combo made specifically for them. For example: “oh you got hit by a car? God wouldn’t have allowed that to happen if you didn’t cheat on your wife!” or something unreasonable like that. This way of thinking is unfortunately common. Fortunately, the majority of people (religious or not) use option 1 as their default explanation as it is broader and in effect, all encompassing. For example: “you broke your leg! Shit! Oh well.” Or something rude like that. Of course, none of these options are fully satisfactory, which makes sense because few answers of cosmic importance ever are. But you are in luck, because the matchstick man has formulated and posited a fourth option. It is an explanation far more specific, definitive and divisive than options 1-3. It goes as follows:
4) Bad things happen because they have to.
This option opens a variety of philosophical doors. You may be wondering, “What about the holocaust?” or “what about the small pox pandemic of the Americas?” “what about my parents dying?”, “what about my chronic disease?” et cetera. There are an innumerable tragedies in the world, not to mention the rest of the universe. Life is inherently tragic. I’m sorry. To exist is to experience suffering. It is not an option, it is a requirement. The worst part? That will never change. The audacity! And the explanation for this controversial take? The reason why the matchstick man choses to reject all other explanations of suffering in the universe?, It is this:
“Balance.” He says. “I can only accept that in the whole of things, there is balance. Otherwise, how could it exist?”
So why doesn’t our wise protagonist inform Una of this fact? You would think that if she just accepted this, she could stand up and be on her blissful way. Of course, you know why. Una is a person, and people are not so simple. People do not like to be belittled, or condescended or reminded of things they already know. Of course she knows the truth at the heart of suffering, because everyone does. She simply needs to believe it.
###
Somewhere at the head of the Indus river valley, quite some time after the first people arrived, but long before the construction of the Peshawar space elevator, a bubble of light expanded near a small wheat field above a squat, red, mud-brick city. A boot poked through. The boot landed heavier than expected and took a moment to cope with this before it’s owner decided to follow it through the door. Tentatively, Una Killmaster took her first step on her home planet.
Una pulled through the portal and stood in bewilderment, feeling the heaviness in her arms, her leaden feet sticking to the ground like heavy stones. The air was humid and thick, like syrup in her atrophied lungs. It was mid-morning, and a large moon, much larger than anything Una had seen, hung above the horizon like a large ripe peach. There was more green than she had ever seen, leading away in a great expanse. To her right, she could see a range of pure white mountains in the distance and in front of her a great river flowing languidly as children played on it’s bank. Birds sang, insects clicked and buzzed, people called in the distance. It smelled sharp and bright and smooth, colorful and smoky and clear. It was the most beautiful thing Una had ever seen. Whatever dark thoughts had plagued her moments before were put on hold. The field of wheat rippled, the birds adjusted on their branches and the moon moved slowly, taking it’s time as it always does. A breeze ruffled Una’s cloak. The sky seemed to glow from within.
###
The color of the Martian sky has changed much in the lifetime of the planet. When there was no sky, stars burned through patchy, sun-blown chemical clouds and volcanic debris. Later, when the surface had cooled and spread with oceans, life appeared. True, Martian life, not the stuff that people brought with them later on. It was this life, the teeming oceans and thin cold forests that stained the sky a deep, dark blue. Like it’s sister, Mars was a planet of blue and green. Unfortunately, this was not to last. The native life of mars came and went, and nearly four billion years before Una’s time, those expansive seas and strange forests had dried up and withered away, revealing the mars that people first laid eyes on, the mars of tan skies and blue sunsets. Great desert plains and extinct volcanos, the mars of shining moons and oceans of dry rock under familiar stars, the ancient and mysterious planet of deserts infinite. This would change again, with the first people on mars bringing their plants and machines with them, slowly tinting the sky and holding it in place with machines so as not to lose it to the sun like the blue skies of millennia past. Una’s sky, the one she knew for her whole life, was dying. The last sky of human mars was half blue and half red, tinted by dust storms that reclaimed oceans and salt pans. It was half lit with the sun and half with the stars and sister moons. It was a landscape of change and beauty in it’s own chaotic way. Before this day, before seeing Earth, Una had never experienced the rapture of a totally blue sky. She felt like it could swallow her, like it could lift her and hold her and carry her gaze forever. What would have normally been silence was filled to the brim with the rushing and simmering of life in its endless moments.
###
The Matchstick man waited for Una to say something. She didn’t.
“…so?” he said, standing behind her as the portal sealed itself shut with a small pop.
“it’s real.” She said. “Earth is real”.
“Well, yeah” said the matchstick man, unsure of what to say, “did you think it wasn’t?”
“yeah. Where I’m from… Earth is the afterlife. It’s where we came from and where we go when we die”. Towards the end of her sentence, her eyes began to widen. She looked to the matchstick man with an obvious look of shock “ I’m dead. I died and you took me here. Holy shit.” She looked back to the valley “holy shit it’s all…”
The matchstick man interrupted her.
“no! no, Earth is a real place. You are not dead. You are most certainly alive.” He, too was getting a little shaken up. “we traveled here using the same method you used to find me.”
“what?” Una sat down.
“you’re people, the Martians, came from Earth” the Matchstick man summarized. He sat down too, crushing his own swath of short wheat stalks in the middle of the field. Una looked around in bewilderment.
“Why? This is way better!” she stated, in what was likely the understatement of the century.
“it’s all relative. Mars had it’s peak and it’s decline, so did Earth” The matchstick man said. “This valley will dry up. It’s people will become desperate and leave. This is the way it works. Earth was ruined beyond repair long before you were born. At least I think.” He paused in thought then asked, “By the way, do you know when you are from?”.
“When?” Una’s arms were wrapped around her knees again.
“yes, when. when was your birthday?” the matchstick man asked.
“25 five years ago” Una replied. A Grasshopper landed on her shoulder and she gave it a wary look, causing it to leap away.
“I see.” said the Matchstick man. He was working a response when Una continued:
“but the communes have been around for ten generations.”
“oh.” He said. “oh shit you’re from that Mars”.
“That Mars?” Una said, her tone of suspicion renewed.
The Matchstick man had adopted a strange expression, suddenly looking at Una like her mother had just died.
“What do you mean, ‘that Mars’?” Una repeated. The matchstick man didn’t answer. Instead, he stood up.
“we should find some shade. The festival won’t begin for a while.” He began to stride to the edge of the field where a tree with a wide canopy shaded a soft patch of grass.
“Hey! What? You can’t just say something like that!” Una was suddenly very angry. “you can’t just say that and refuse to explain why!” she yelled at him.
“I actually can.” The Matchstick man called back, “but I won’t. come get some shade. We can get comfortable. I need to tell you some things.”
“No shit!” yelled Una. She followed him anyway. They stalked across the field, Una trying her best to be angry but really just feeling tired. Small, chattering birds evacuated the tree as they approached. The matchstick man removed his coat and laid it on the ground, then sat on it and leaned against the tree. When Una arrived, she was sweating.
“what ‘mars’ am I from?” she asked again, not giving up the question. The Matchstick man looked at her through the muggy heat for a long moment.
“When I found you…” he started, then trailed off. “When I found you, were you with other people?” he was looking at her now, his eyes fortified. The wind stilled.
“no.” Una said simply. The memories came back again. “No, I was alone. I think everybody…” she looked away, towards the town and the vastness of green. “I think everybody died”. She said. she sat down heavily in the shade. “I’m the last one”.
“I know.” Said the Matchstick man. There was another length of birdsong-filled silence. They sat for a while. “I have reason to believe that you are the last Human in the universe”.
Una didn’t move. The matchstick man was unsure if he should have said anything. Una’s hands moved to her temple for a moment, then fell back to her lap.
“That makes sense” she finally said. “that’s exactly how it feels”. She began to cry.
The matchstick man let her fall apart for a moment. The grass in the field waved, and the wind dried sweat from the brows of two people entirely displaced from time. A leaf blew across the dirt path at the edge of the field. Listening to Una’s muffled sobs, the Matchstick man felt a kinship with it, bobbing and rustling, rolling and flying before coming to rest and repeating. After a while, the Matchstick man spoke.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. She looked up, eyes puffy, nose running.
“no.”
“That’s a lie” said the Matchstick man.
“well, probably a little” she said, lying again. She looked at the ground.
“let go get something to eat.” said the Matchstick man. He stood up and offered Una a hand.
“where?” she asked.
“well, Normally we would ask for a spot at someone’s table.” He began, still holding his hand outstretched. “but today is a holiday, the whole town will eat together. All are welcome.” She took his hand and stood up, still wiping her eyes.
“What holiday?” Una asked, as the Matchstick man picked up his coat and slung it over his shoulder.
“Today is the Wailing- the day in which the people of the Indus valley celebrate grief. It is their holiday to celebrate tears and sadness. It is also the best place in human history to get drunk.”
###
Grief is a terrible thing. It is felt by everyone at some point in their lives and manifests in strange and unusual ways. It has no shape; it cannot be described accurately. Is grief one thing? Is it many? Is it both? Probably all of the above. People grieve the dead, and they also grieve the living, and those who they have never even met. People grieve for animals and plants and all sorts of inanimate objects. Like any emotion, it has the power to still time. Like any emotion, it can change the shape of reality, it can alter the colors you see and the food you taste, it can add or subtract anything from anything else. Like any emotion, it’s power is unknown and is therefore also unmatched.
The beauty of this is that even in its depths it provides a sense of clarity. Nothing can forge a person’s meaning, their own personal legend, like hardship. If your life were a stream, would you prefer to run quickly and easily along the stones from point A to point B? or would you prefer to fall into pools and circulate, find stillness and wash among rapids, float in pools that house unknown beasts and carve canyons? What would be more memorable?
And what to do about grief? What can you do to ease this pain? Nothing! You just have to sit there and feel it! because if you don’t feel it, if you don’t dive to the bottom of the pool and risk the depths, then you will find yourself drowning in everything but water.
Following the Matchstick man down a dirt path into town, Una felt grief. She felt it to her core. If you’re wondering why, don’t worry. All will become clear.
###
Una is a strong person. Mostly in the physical sense. She has spent the majority of her life training, both physically and mentally, as a warrior and athlete. However, this all took place on the surface of Mars, which has a surface gravity hardly a third as powerful as Earth’s. As Una walked the dusty, humid path between fields and stands of trees she felt her full weight for the first time, each step more laborious than the last. The matchstick man moved at an incessant pace, plodding down the trail with the felt familiarity of someone who had walked the path many times before. The heat was nearly unbearable, and Una had long ago slung her cloak over her shoulder, revealing a loose black shirt and belt. She wondered idly if the sun would burn her skin here, or if the sky alone was enough to protect her from raw sunlight. She wondered a lot of things, but at the moment she really just wanted food.
The narrow path became wider and less meandering, its steep curves smoothed into wide easy turns as the unlikely pair wound their way into the town. They passed animals Una had never seen, large cows and oxes, goats and dogs nipping at heels and panting in the shade. There were people, too. The people here were short and thick to Una, their muscles wide and bulging and skin dark and creased. They wore silly hats and led animals with them as they shared the road into town. Una noticed that many of them were flat chested and far more muscular than any of the sisters in the commune. She stared, sometimes receiving smiles in return, but mostly catching looks of confusion and distrust. She realized she probably appeared far stranger to them than they did to her, stepping heavily in her thick boots and black fatigues. She stuck closer to the matchstick man, who was fitting in to the scene much in the way a dolphin fits in a cow pasture. He didn’t seem to mind.
The ragged pair found their way to larger paths still, the open pastures and fields of wheat slowly giving way to huts and outbuildings as the path became a road. At one point they passed a gaggle of children playing in the road. They were naked, some of them with strange, alien appendages between their legs. Una tried not to stare. Panting, she caught up to the matchstick man, who was smiling and nodding to people as they passed by. Some gave him that same look of confusion, but others waved back enthusiastically, some of them even recognizing him. There was a lot for her to unpack.
“hey.” She said to the small, strange man. His brow was especially furrowed in the sunlight, the dark ledge of flesh glistening with droplets of sweat. His hair was sticking out in every direction, giving him a comical, almost surprised look.
“Yes?” he said.
“I have a lot of questions.” Una said, with an edge of distress in her voice. She looked nervously behind her shoulder, towards the children playing in the road.
“I’m sure you do. There’s a lot you don’t know” the matchstick man replied looking towards the red brick walls of the small town, now only minutes away. “what’s on your mind?”
Una spent a moment trying to sort out what she wanted to say. Then, after catching another look from one of the strange, flat chested women walking by, she leaned in as if to tell a secret:
“why are all the people different?” she whispered, wearing a look of complete and genuine puzzlement on her ash stained face, her cheek scar pale in the noon sun.
The matchstick man’s face cracked open into a wide smile, then erupted into a fit of laughter, causing him to bend over and nearly fall on the ground. Una stood on her toes, as tense as she was confused. The matchstick man attracted more stares, lost in his own private joke. It was this way for some time, Una standing expectantly and the strange people passing by in a steady stream towards the town. Finally, he finished his bout of laughter and wiped a series of tears from his massive eyes. He was still chuckling as he answered,
“Una, what a question!” he stifled another giggle, “if only I had the answer…” Una was still staring, confusion plain on her face. The matchstick man recognized this and gave her a knowing smile, “lets rephrase the question, are you wondering why these people look different from the all people you have seen thus far in your life?”
Una nodded.
“and are you wondering why that little boy back there had something hanging between his legs?”
Una nodded again, wondering vaguely what the word boy meant.
“Then I’m sorry. I should have mentioned this earlier, but it was bound to come up at some point.”
“what was bound to come up at some point?” una’s look of confusion was cracking, showing the layers of stress beneath. The last thing she needed today was more bullshit.
“Gender, of course!” the Matchstick man said “one of the many things you were likely never introduced to in your… um…” he appeared to be searching for a word, “cloistered home”. He looked satisfied with his statement. Una did not. The Matchstick man realized this and tried again, “what word did you use to refer to your fellow Martians?” he asked. A woman passed by and said something mean-sounding towards him, but the comment bounced right off him. He was focused.
Una thought for a moment before replying, noticed the trickle of people around them thicken into a steady stream. “um… sisters?” she said, “women?”. She was still confused.
“Exactly!” the matchstick man exclaimed, “that is because you only ever knew one kind of human. now, what if I told you that there were at least two and usually three different kinds of human.” The conspiratorial look on his face was unconvincing.
“In the same species?” Una asked. She lost herself in thought for a moment, then realized, “is this like plants?” she asked.
“No” the matchstick man stated definitively before immediately changing his mind “well, kind of. Plants need to fertilize to make fruit right? Fertilization requires sperm and an egg, two kinds of stuff, to be combined before a fruit can grow and produce more seeds” Una nodded, still struggling to understand how this applied to people.
“That happens in flowers, right?” Una asked.
“yes, perfect!” the matchstick man said, his hands were out in front of him now, animating his speech, “now, in flowers, those two parts are part of the same structure. In people, those two parts are usually separated so each person gets one half of the process.” The Matchstick man gave Una a piercing look, making sure she was following along.
“and that’s gender!” Una exclaimed, the look of confusion evaporating from her face.
“No!” the matchstick man said again.
“what!?” Una shouted, exasperated. She could smell food cooking in the distance. None of this made sense. Her brain felt like yam pudding. The two of them were now making a scene on the road, with some townspeople having stopped to watch the show.
“don’t worry!” the matchstick man said, attempting to soothe Una’s exasperation. “you’re on the right track!” his hand motions were getting grander every time he spoke, as if he was directing a symphony with his thick, gnarled fingers. “what I just explained is called sex, which is similar to gender but not the same” Una looked at the matchstick man with a renewed skepticism.
“that is not sex,” Una said matter-of-factly, “sex is fun, and it doesn’t involve plants”. As she spoke, she recalled a formative moment involving one of her classmates and a stolen zucchini. Not usually, anyway she thought.
The matchstick man froze, looking confused for a moment before his eyebrows raised and betrayed a slight blush.
“not that kind of sex! The biological kind! Humans have different kinds of body parts to help make babies” he finally shouted, attracting more stares from the passing crowd.
Una thought for a moment, thinking about the unfortunate zucchini of her youth. Then it clicked, her brief but critical lesson in human anatomy having made quite the splash. She began to look around, intentionally staring at the people around her.
“if they’re not women, what are they?” she asked, genuinely perplexed.
“men, usually. But also lots of other things depending on the situation… we can get into it later, we need to eat” the Matchstick man said with finality, grabbing Una’s arm and pulling her away from the center of the road.
“Hey! I still have lots of questions!” Una said
“There will be plenty of time to answer all of them. But there’s beer to drink and stew to eat” he said, steering the protesting woman into the river of foot traffic. They were soon lost in the flow of people, more than Una had ever seen, as they approached the gates of the town. The scent was overpowering, the thick smell of roasting meat overlapping with the sweet smell of fresh sweat and cooking grain, the stench of all manner of animals, the deep and cool overtone of the slow and ever-present river carrying everything with it downstream. Over the rush of voices, the wail of horns and clatter of footsteps one sound could be heard in distinction: the unmistakable wail of men and women crying in unison, as though begging the sky for forgiveness. As Una would soon learn, They were.
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