Spaces in between are limitless. Scott needs those spaces, desires them. He releases himself into that space, and launches himself onto an ultimate metaphysical journey…
It is the spaces in between that fascinate him. Looking at his apartment, Scott is acutely aware of every place that has no furniture, no decoration, no evidence of any choice that he has made, and the way that the machinery of contemporary life has sought to paper over even these spaces with the vague intentionality of neutral paint and decorative molding and overhead lighting.
Others pass over these spaces, but Scott wishes to live in them. They are quite beautiful, he thinks, because they have a character that is wholly free of the burdens of goals and relationships and career expectations. They are in between, forgotten, and for that reason, limitless.
There is one such space in particular that draws him towards it like it is magnetized. It is in the hallway between his bedroom and his bathroom, a fuzzy oval of darkness on the wall that persists by some quirk of design, even when every light in his apartment is turned on. It is maybe four or five feet across, and stretches from about a foot above the floor to nearly the ceiling, and every night, as Scott passes this space on his way to bed, he looks at the deep ecru darkness and feels a pull. More often than not, he stops and stands for a few seconds, looking at the wall and breathing with it, before continuing on to bed.
Scott thinks about the space after he has gotten in bed and turned off the light. He thinks about it when he wakes up in the morning. He can feel it on the wall as he walks by dressed for work, though the pallid, secondhand sunlight in the hallway is sufficient to dispel the space’s signifying shadow; he can feel it as he sits at his desk and meets with friends and visits his parents and goes about the rest of his life. He carries an awareness of the space with him wherever he goes, and because of that, it is as much a part of him as anything else.
If he had to describe the nature of the pull that this space exerts on him, Scott would describe it as yearning.
And why not, he thinks, in the rare moments that he reflects upon the strangeness of this longing; his need for the space isn’t hurting anyone. He is responsible and successful, and burdens nobody in his life with any extraneous needs. He feels he has earned the right to an inexplicable quirk or two.
Still, there is something furtive and perhaps even shameful about feeling desire for something as strange as a space — not a dog, or a home, or even a city, but a space — that makes Scott keep this relationship to himself.
#
Then one night, Scott is brushing his teeth and feels a certain pull from the hallway, and when he follows it, stepping out of the bathroom with a mouth full of mint, he looks at the space and he knows it is time. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he trusts that feeling. His whole life he has trusted that feeling, and the few times he has not are the times he regrets most. So he goes back into the bathroom and spits out his toothpaste, and then walks into the hallway and faces the space head-on.
He can feel the space face him as well, and gather itself, and prepare.
Scott reaches out. His hands sink into the drywall; it is damp and saturated, like reaching into the earth. Slowly, Scott clenches one fistful of the crumbling wall in the darkness and tosses it aside, and then begins to dig faster and faster as all his pent-up longing comes out, using both hands to tear the orifice wider and wider as the body that had been hidden in the space emerges into the light.
The man is damp and clammy from having been in the wall for so long, but otherwise seems unharmed, breathing slowly and deeply as though asleep, eyes closed. As Scott pulls him out of the wall — it is a little awkward, but Scott does the best he can — the man’s eyes wrinkle, and he latches onto Scott with strong arms and holds tight as Scott collapses backward on the floor with the man on top of him. After catching his breath, Scott carefully rolls the man off him and onto his back on the floor, and then finally allows himself to really look at the man he has found in earnest.
It is strange; seeing his own body on another person makes it look entirely fresh.
Scott starts at the bottom, taking in the solid feet with the long toes, then up the legs, the dusting of dark hair across the calves and thighs growing almost shockingly thick at the crotch, and above that, the slightly convex belly and meaty pecs and arms, all surprisingly smooth—Scott has never fully understood the evolutionary logic behind that contrast—and then up to the clean face and shaven-bald head, and the eyelids with their dense, pretty eyelashes, which, as he watches, open to reveal bright blue eyes that look back at Scott in the same way he looks at himself.
The two of them spend a long time just looking at each other on the floor, as Scott waits for the Scott that has emerged from the wall to grow accustomed to being alive. When the new Scott seems at last capable of moving, Scott helps him into his bed, and the two of them lie there all night, not sleeping, but simply feeling each other’s body beneath the sheets, focusing on every detail, the places it is warmer or cooler, rougher or more sensitive, exploring themselves through new eyes.
#
When they die, the Scotts close their eyes together for the last time, and then open them again to find themselves facing an array of strange entities hovering over them and a dark sky beyond.
Scott sits up and looks at Scott, who looks equally nonplussed. They both turn to look at their surroundings more fully.
The two of them lie on some sort of milky, cloudy substance that feels warm and soft beneath Scott’s naked and — thankfully, blissfully — once-again-youthful ass. The cloud itself hovers in the space between planets, and in the distance where it peters out, Scott can see nebulae and galaxies and a universe full of odd lights and darknesses that slowly move in strange ways he can’t quite comprehend.
But he is distracted from focusing on those things because there are hundreds of people hovering over Scott and Scott and watching them. Some of the hovering people look human; but many others are animals or inanimate objects, squirrels or toasters or even agglomerations of leaves or fire; and then there are some that are even more abstract, mere presences in space that Scott can only perceive because they warp his view of the star fields behind them, and because when he focuses on them, he feels happiness or wariness or even stranger emotions suddenly descend upon him in a way that feels like communication.
As Scott is still taking in this celestial assembly, there arises suddenly in front of him and Scott two full-bodied, nude women with long red hair that fans out behind them wildly in the zero gravity of space, both smiling beatifically. The one on the left floats up a little higher and calls out in a lovely, fuzzy alto, “Welcome to the afterlife!”
The assembly cheers and twinkles and sends an array of confusing emotions streaming over Scott. “I am Xanthippe, and this is also Xanthippe.” The woman on the right inclines her head. “Because you have already found your other self, you have earned a place in the afterlife for people like us.”
Scott takes another look around at the crowd and realizes that every person there is doubled in the same way as him and Scott. He looks to Scott, who is looking back at him, clearly having realized this in tandem; and when Scott sees his own sudden dissatisfaction mirrored on Scott’s face, tamps down on his own expression immediately and looks back at the two Xanthippes, who are smiling still.
“We’re so happy to have you,” the second Xanthippe says. That seems to be the cue, as immediately the crowd disassembles and begins drifting toward Scott and Scott, greeting them, telling them all about this afterlife and the wonders in store.
It goes on for years—there are a lot of people to greet—but Scott never grows bored or tired or has to pee. He never even feels hungry, though when from time to time they are presented with some astounding type of dish, comprised of stardust or sunshine or fruit from New Zealand, Scott finds that he is immediately ravenous, and then once he has eaten it, fully satiated.
Finally, the welcomes have concluded, and Scott and Scott find themselves alone for the first time since they died. They look at each other and go to find a private place to talk.
For a few weeks, they just drift around the universe, simply taking in everything about this new life — there hardly seems to be any rush, after all — and then eventually come to settle on the rings of a blue planet, which feel as soft and cozy as down.
The vista from the blue rings is indescribably beautiful, and for a few moments, the dream is perfect; but then Scott can’t avoid confronting that niggling feeling any longer, and looks to Scott, who seems to feel the pressure of his gaze, and turns back to him. Scott can see Scott’s naked chest glimmering in the distant starlight. Scott waits as he clears his throat. He is the bolder of them, and usually the first to speak. “It’s not enough anymore, is it?”
Scott hesitates and then shakes his head slowly.
He watches Scott furrow his brow and sigh, and then turn to look at the universe splayed out in front of them. For the briefest of moments, Scott is nervous that Scott feels something different from him, and that moment nearly kills him; but then Scott looks back at Scott and smiles. “Then I guess we’ll just have to keep looking.”
Scott sighs in relief and reaches out a hand. Scott grabs it and pulls Scott toward him, and for a long time they just hold each other and take reassurance in the familiar warmth of each other’s bodies.
#
Their new friends in the afterlife are all perplexed. “You already have your two selves,” is the constant refrain, “What more could you need?”
Sometimes, Scott or Scott tries to explain, but even in an afterlife tailored for people like them, language is still insufficient to describe the urge they are feeling. So eventually, they stop trying to articulate it and keep to happier, easier topics, which only increases their yearning.
As they crisscross the universe, searching in stars and planets and the bright, shadowless hearts of supernovae, the Scotts find themselves drawn increasingly to an unexceptional, almost matter-less region in the space in between galaxies. They continue to drift around this space slowly, taking breaks to indulge or visit others or even just to test the strength of this pull, but they always return to the same unexceptional region in space until finally they have pinpointed a precise spot in the vacuum that is just a few feet across and which makes both of them feel a little less hungry, even if neither of them can quite say why.
They set up camp near that space and live there for years, learning to understand the space’s character and feel, letting their love percolate and accumulate in the space bit by bit.
Then finally, when the feeling has reached its peak, Scott and Scott turn to the space and reach into it together.
There is a finicky moment or two while Scott’s fingers scrabble for purchase and he sees a look of consternation pass over Scott’s face as well. But then he sees Scott’s expression flash into relief, and a second later, Scott feels it too — a little rubbery bit of nothing that his hand clenches around instinctively — and the two of them glance at each other and then pull back in tandem. The dark space splits apart immediately, as though it had just been waiting to be opened, and the two of them tumble back in opposite directions and come to a halt on opposite sides of the gap.
Disoriented, Scott looks to Scott across the gap and checks that he is all right and sees Scott looking back at him, checking as well. The two of them float together and grasp hands, and then turn together to look at the new space they have opened.
There are two people looking back at them from the other side.
It is another two Scotts, also holding hands. Scott meets the eyes of the one on the left and smiles, then looks to the one on the right and sees him smiling too. Scott looks to his own Scott and squeezes his hand. Scott squeezes his hand back, shivering in excitement.
Together, the two of them turn and speed toward the Scotts who are already speeding toward them, clearly just as eager as the two of them to become four.
#
Scott dies again and again, and again and again. Each time, Scott accumulates more of himself, until finally, Scott reaches an afterlife that is full of all the versions of Scott that could ever exist.
But the moment Scott reaches this universe, he feels that something is still missing. With a glance that goes around the Scott-verse in an instant, he can tell that all the other Scotts agree.
There is a great conference of all the Scotts on a large, amply-shaped torus galaxy, and a discussion that takes many millennia to complete. It proceeds less in clear words and questions than in touches and moods, as by now Scott is well-versed in the myriad methods with which he communicates with himself, as well as the need to pay attention to the aspects of himself that are least capable of speaking, as those aspects often move in response to some deeper truth that the more language-bound Scott has not yet learned to acknowledge. When he encounters one of these less verbal Scotts in the gathering, Scott simply stays with them, and loves them, and learns through small acts of creativity and physicality to feel their inchoate truth that drives those Scotts and that also thrums deep in himself. This process is slow, but beautiful, and they have all the time in the universe.
Always, Scott returns to his first Scott eventually. By now, Scott knows Scott better than he knows himself, and he knows that Scott feels the same about him. This feeling only increases as he and Scott meet and re-meet over the ages, until eventually, Scott has outsourced so much of who he is to his Scott that he really only knows who he is in relation to him, and though at first he is concerned about the loss of his independent, original self, the bliss he feels from that loss—a loss he has always secretly desired — swallows his concern like the ocean.
As the eons go by, Scott feels this loss multiplying exponentially, as he and his Scott lose themselves into other pairs and quartets, and then octets, and then thousands and millions and billions, as each Scott slowly becomes an amalgam of who they are only in relation to all other Scotts.
The Scotts drift closer and closer physically as well, shifting from the torus galaxy that had housed their initial conference to a dark expanse in the void far from any planets or stars and moving toward each other until all of them are touching at once; and then they move even closer, body pressing into body with no space between until they have formed into two gargantuan arms and legs and a head hanging in the vastness of space, a mega-Scott made up of all the smaller Scotts, glimmering dimly in the pallid light of far-away stars.
Scott moves slowly through this mass, the bodies alternately warm and soft and cool and hard against his own as he exchanges touches and feelings with the other Scotts in an accelerating blur, until one day the memory of what it was to be himself is so impossibly distant that it barely exists at all.
And with a slight shiver that moves around the thousand trillion Scotts in an instant, they know it is time.
A few seconds later, as though right on cue, the space in front of the Scotts begins to vibrate. The Scotts turn their collective head toward the disturbance, and watch as the darkness shimmers and takes on substance and suddenly crumples inward and breaks. A hand the size of mega-Scott’s plunges through the bright opening, appears to hesitate briefly, and then grabs a fistful of space as though it were earth and pulls it back out through the rift and tosses it aside. The hand returns and is joined by another, and together the hands begin to tear the orifice wide in a frenzy.
Mega-Scott closes his eyes and waits to be brought into the light.
END
