Birth

1.

One minute he wasn't there at all and then he was. How did he know that? Well, he doesn't I lied. And it wasn't sudden. The realization of being there came slowly. It was a matter of practice in the action of being there. I forgot about that. He was there with his tongue and his gums and his cheeks then his eyes and his little fingers. We all stood around watching him.

It was the beginning of lonliness. This world adds the sensoria that enables lonliness, that other worlds do not. It was the movement out of death into time that brought that about. Touch from mother and father was no substitute for the immersion that he had before. He didn't know it. He just started to know.

In some situations, they have never heard of distance. They measure travel by completeness. In his case he started out at the port of emptiness and gained order by order. It took him a while even to find the vessal that would eventually carry him here, where all the cells moved into place. It was a long journey but his carrier was strong and he finally arrived, having travelled nearly the whole way.

We called him Jacob. We watched over him as soon as he became human, as soon as he gained the honorary title of he, but not yet the super-honorary title of you. That would take some time.

Jacob's fingers were like the organelles of starfish and anemones at first. They acted on their own in seeming meaninglessness. Jacob would have to tame them when the proper cells came into being and the control room settings were established behind his eyes. We hoped that would happen.

2.

We were having breakfast when the question hit me especially hard. There was the sun slowly expending its seed. The sperm of the sun hits our eyes and bears transparency, translucency, warmth on our skin. We build futures and return to simplicity. But it will all get used up, when the sun is an old, shrivelled man, level out to cold black. And our eyes that make something out of bleak nothing will stop. Why did Jacob make that journey? Why did we invite him?

The sun rose quickly. The multi-eyed, multi-mouthed god sang in the strange, undelayed harmony. The mouths sang like the organelles of prehistoric sponges. They exuded song as they slid from one audience to the next. When Jacob awoke and started to cry we held him up. The warmth firing through the glass quieted him, made him laugh. The jolly sun penetrated even the dark leaves and the paper making everything glow. We were grateful for our eyes, even though they were temporary and quasi-static.

3.

My name is Jacob. We were introduced when I was in a different form. My head was bigger relative to my body. Now I am long limbed and small skulled. My parents, whom you met, have turned to what you call chemicals, as far as you can tell. They travelled back I don't know where. Only they know now. It's just a whispered secret.

I saw them leave, saw them off, but I don't know from where. I never saw them step into the carraige or the cabin or the passenger seat. I know how people arrive, but their disappearence is a mystery, done invisibly.

I could see your bodies, mother, father. I knew your names before you went away. We lived on the same Earth, overlapping during our brief variegated years. It could have been that we might have fallen through different holes in time. I didn't see you on the voyage but we all travelled blind, gauze over our eyes.