Infinity
untitled
Okay, okay. This is my life. I live in this doorless room. The walls are made with a hard, smooth, blue material unknown to me. They are carved with cryptic symbols from ceiling to floor. These are on every wall except for one, where instead of scrawled symbols there is only a giant sideways eight. It is carved deep and painted gold.
There is a window and I can see outside there is a vine covered temple in an open field. It is so ancient it has assimilated with the earth; vegetation grows freely among the pillars and in the chapel. In front there is a grandiose marble statue of a long-haired young woman, her outstretched arms reaching toward the sky. In her right hand, there is a brilliant jewel; it catches the moon in a way that seems to direct beams of celestial light through my window.
On the horizon there is a city. It is distant, but brightly lit. If you stare closely, you can see the streets alive with people at all hours.
Or maybe it's my imagination.
You see, I've been this way for several hundred years. I have no idea how many. I just woke up one day and here I was. And nothing changes in this room. There is no food, but I never starve, no water, but I never thirst. I am not a day older than the day I got here.
And that window. Sometimes I look out it and I think I can see the entire world I reside in. And then I break through the window and explore the temple and travel all the way to the city and meet the people there. And then I travel around the world seeing the fantastical sights and hearing the elegant sounds and tasting the exotic foods.
And then I wake up, my head still pressed against the window.
Sometimes I study the symbols on the walls and think they are the incantations to a magic spell that can break this prison. I go from symbol to symbol, coming up with ideas for what each one means, whispering to myself how I think they are pronounced. But eventually, I reach the end of the symbols and all I see is that giant sideways eight.
And that is the one symbol that I understand: infinity.
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I love the greek infinity symbol :P
Effective imagery
confusing but well written
deserving of a +1
but slightly reminiscent of "green walls" (I think that was the title) by Inthecaffeteria :P
the writing is very matter of fact, which works very well because this person only knows one thing and one thing only, there is no room for interpretation... I dont think it is confusing so much as very blunt about an odd concept, which only adds to the impact... I like this very much... +1
I think there is very much room for interpretation in this piece. We can consider what the main character sees as a very limited point of view of a much larger world. And while what the character can see is concrete, what is beyond what he/she sees is meant to trigger the imagination.
I have provided an arcane series of objects from which one can imagine an entire world/history. I would be interested to see interpretations of what this world might be like from other people.
I always find these "I'm stuck in a box" stories amusing, the culmination of this being the movie "Cube". Unfortunately they typically lack real girth or point. Without extensive exposition, they rarely amount to more than pokes at funny concepts in quantum physics, or human nature pieces on the effects of solitude.