Eksperyment

Grzebiąc w komputerze znalazłem swoje opowiadanie "postmodernistyczne", które napisałem 9 lat temu. 

To-Whom-It-May-Concern's Experiment

      Darkness reigned supreme throughout the small office, which had been abandoned by almost all the employees. Suddenly a little flame behind the desk could be espied. To-Whom-It-May-Concern started Its everyday ritual of lighting a cigarette, lighting a candle and lighting the last memo in the ashtray. As usual, inhaling sharp streams of pleasant smoke, It exhaled clouds of the transformed one. To-Whom-It-May-Concern felt Its moments of ultimate happiness and fulfilment.

      Walking around the office, the fag dangling from between Its lips, the candle suspended in the right hand, To-Whom-It-May-Concern once again recapitulated the day that had passed. Recapitulation was the only process To-Whom-It-May-Concern was able to conceive and implement.

       "I am who I am," said it, "And I am the right person in the right place."

       It was smoking as It walked past a distinguishably large pile of documents for which nobody cared when It stopped for a good while.

       "Do I really have to...?" asked it. "And, after all, who am I?"

       It had never even dared to call Itself NOBODY, although there where periods in Its life when the temptation was quite strong. Nevertheless, It realised that calling Itself NOBODY would be a sign of the highest level of conceit. It would sound like EVERYMAN or an ABSOLUTE. One should deserve being called NOBODY, thought To-Whom-It-May-Concern, and It did not feel worthy of such grandiosity whatsoever.

        To-Whom-It-May-Concern had no gender, or if It even did it did not matter to It. Since "I" has no sexual connotation, at least in English, It had no problem with self-definition whereas for the people It worked with the problem was totally groundless. They were nothing else but To-Whom-It-May-Concern's replicas and their sexuality simply did not exist. Or, it was rather restricted to their respective Concerns.

        To-Whom-It-May-Concern differed a bit from Its counterparts.  Living in an office It had no pictures of an external world in Its mind but while Its colleagues were entirely satisfied with the reality they were lucky to spend their lives in, To-Whom-It-May-Concern had a spirit of an explorer and a researcher. It was the only exception in the office who between Its Concerns read Scientific Magazines. Being a sort of a realist It was perfectly aware of the limits It lived in. Not being able to discover further dimensions, To-Whom-It-May-Concern decided to explore the universe consisting of fewer than three dimensions. No, It could not become completely flat. This was beyond Its skills. However, To-Whom-It-May-Concern discovered that it was enough to change the light to find Itself in a different dimension. Since the moment It had proposed that significant hypothesis, It had performed a number of incredibly exciting experiments.

      To-Whom-It-May-Concern not only maintained that dimensions were strictly connected with the light provided but also claimed it ascertained the existence of the fractions of dimensions. Therefore, Its nightly ventures were focused on limiting the light to minimum and exploring 'the 2.5-dimension space'.  Assuming it could be true, the world It discovered was by no means less fascinating than the one It could find in any other dimension within the universe.

       Crawling on the office floor, To-Whom-It-May-Concern was exploring the vast plains of the 'UNKNOWN'. Certainly, It knew the office, but in the light of the 2.5 dimension everything looked foreign. To-Whom-It-May-Concern's consciousness was that of a 2.5-dimension creature; and such was Its sight. As far as other senses are concerned, it would prove difficult to define how they were affected by the limits imposed by the restriction of a universe lacking half a dimension.

        To-Whom-It-May-Concern reached the point where Its chair was situated. There were creatures who believed this chair was an integral part of To-Whom-It-May-Concern. Moreover, It was well aware of it and used this said piece of furniture to take advantage of the naive faith of the so-called clients and inquirers. Now It was kneeling and creeping straight under the space between two columns of drawers in its desk.

        "Aha, let's have an experiment", It whispered with a thrill of excitement. It put a paper ball, taken from the waste paper bin, on the floor exactly beside the left front leg of the chair. Crawling under the desk and then round the left column of drawers, To-Whom-It-May-Concern reached the point where its chair was situated.

        "But people are so naive", It thought. "How can one believe my chair and I are a unity?"

        At that very moment, it was struck dumb. Before It exclaimed Its Eureka, It could not believe Its own luck. It had predicted that something like this would happen some day, but It did not expect it to come so soon. What It saw on the floor, looking from behind the desk in the 2.5-dimension-world deserved the name of DISCOVERY. The paper ball, It had left next to the left front chair leg, was still there! It meant only one thing, To-Whom-It-May-Concern had discovered a curve of space. It could be called a reversed result of the space curvature. Since one could get to the same point once covering a shorter distance and then a longer one, the phenomenon mentioned above must undoubtedly exist.

        To-Whom-It-May-Concert was standing up gradually, carefully and with a sort of deliberation. Now, that one of the principles on which the nature of space is based had been discovered, It decided to reach the ultimate state of Cognition. Having shaken off the fear It had been seized with, To-Whom-It-May-Concern decisively put Its left foot on the chair. Immediately afterwards Its right one joined its comrade. Not for long, however, because it was already on the desk. Fortunately, they were soon reunited. To-Whom-It-May-Concern was standing between the heaps of paper, the candle fortified in Its right hand, looking around the office in silent ecstasy. The weak light of Its candle encompassed more than it used to when To-Whom-It-May-Concern had been crawling on the floor.

       Was this the Universe in its full beauty?

       The answer came as if evoked by It. The Light Comprehended Everything and To-Whom-It-May-Concern was suddenly able to have a perfect insight into Reality. Its candle was of no use any longer. The Light was incredibly strong.

        "What the hell are you doing here?" a Voice filled up the Universe. To-Whom-It-May-Concern's emotion reached its peak: God-in-Person was talking to It.

        "Dear Mr. Williams, what are you doing on the desk?"

        God's grace towards It manifested clearly; It got Its definition at last. Not only was It now aware of Its gender but Now-He was endowed with a NAME.

        As the old myths have it, a mortal cannot survive a direct encounter with the Manifestation of the Absolute. Williams was conscious of that. He fell off his desk, head down, straight at the feet of old Smith, a night watchman.