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Dorian’s Unfinished Work

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This post was originally published through Patreon on April 9, 2019

Dorian’s fingers dashed across the keyboard—forward and back, like a concert pianist in the throes of a wild composition. The light from his laptop’s monitor lit up his face, making him pale like a ghost. And that was precisely what he would be soon enough, for Death was coming, and Death would brook no delay.

Words tumbled out of him, but none were the right words; like broken keys, not a single one fit the unique lock that shuttered his imagination to the outside world.

Have to finish before Death takes me away.

And, as if the thought were a summons, the clock on his desk chimed the hour. Startled, Dorian looked up, and there he stood.

Death.

He hovered in the doorway, staring at Dorian with thinly veiled amusement.

“Are you ready?” Death asked. “The hour grows late and I have others to visit before the night is done.”

“If you could just give me one more night, maybe two—”

“No,” said Death. “Seventy years is time enough to accomplish any task. It’s time to go.”

Dorian gazed hopelessly at the laptop. The ideas he wanted to communicate were all there in one form or another, but they were disjoint, jumbled, incomplete.

“Then could I at least have an hour?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Please. I have to finish my work.”

Death offered him a smile.

“May I let you in on a secret?”

Death moved forward into the room, his shadow sweeping over the wide wooden desk, and Dorian shrank back.

“A human’s work,” he whispered, leaning close to Dorian’s ear, “is never finished. There will always be imperfections and some way to improve upon what’s already been done. It’s part of your species’ charm.”

“You don’t understand. If I don’t finish, others won’t know what I’m trying to say.”

Death offered him a sagely nod.

“Perhaps. But I’ll let you in on another secret. That, too, is part of your species’ charm. Consider Pascal and his Pensees. He only outlined what would have amounted to volumes before he died, yet what he did to commit to paper has inspired generations of philosophers, not to mention his notable contributions to science and mathematics. Sometimes, that which is unfinished provides the greatest value.”

Dorian weighed Death’s words, and at last, he nodded.

“Then could I take a moment to print what I have so my family can find it in the morning?”

Death considered Dorian’s proposal. “That,” he said, “would be acceptable.”

So Dorian and Death sat together in silence while the printer regurgitated his life’s work, and when it finished—when the last page emerged, the internal fans quieted, and Dorian shut down his laptop for the last time—Death crooked a too-pale finger, and Dorian, breathing deep, rose to follow after him.

“Will it hurt?” Dorian asked.

“Only for a moment.”

Dorian found this to be acceptable, and after taking Death’s hand, the two of them marched forward into the dark.

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Starting Over

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“I can’t do it.”

The Sacred Library had been silent save for the quiet whisking of a thousand pens in a thousand notebooks, each lying open before an acolyte in training, and the words bounced around the cathedral-style building before fleeing down the halls and out of earshot.

Wendy had her own pen, but unlike the others, hers wasn’t moving. Instead, she was looking down, watching the world inside her notebook tear itself apart.

“I can’t do it,” she said again, quieter this time.

It was one thing to take a book off the shelf, gaze at the words on the pages, and read the world that was etched between the lines. It was another thing altogether to become its author. A successful reading required great skill, but even that level of talent was a drop in the ocean compared to the otherworldly challenge of Creation.

Wendy had survived three years of training, but now, after constructing her own world piece by piece, it was unraveling. She peered through the symbols written in her notebook. She watched the sea levels rise, the winds gain speed, the ground begin to shake, and all she could do was sit and allow the apocalypse to unfold.

“What’s this now?”

Wendy turned to find Randal, one of the Library’s oldest disciples, standing behind her.

“I can’t do it, sir.”

Randal took the notebook from her trembling hands and started from the beginning, flipping through each page and reading her world just as Wendy had learned to read a dozen others.

“Mmm,” said the old man with the utmost gravity. “I see the problem.”

“There are so many variables, so many loose ends. It got off to a decent start, but now as I approach the end, I’m afraid it’s a lost cause.”

The disciple’s robes swished as he took a seat beside her. He turned back to the last empty page, and after looking her in the eye, returned the notebook. He leaned in close, and in a conspiratorial whisper, said, “I’ll tell you a secret. No creation is ever a lost cause.”

“But I’ve already written so much, and every line at the end depends on another line from the beginning. How can I fix something that rests on such a faulty foundation?”

“By going back and rewriting the foundation.”

“But then the rest of the world will collapse.”

The disciple nodded.

“And in its place, you can build something better.”

That was a possibility Wendy hadn’t considered before. She bit her upper lip in thought.

“No acolyte,” the old man continued, “has ever gotten a new world right on the first try. Nor, for that matter, has any disciple. But if you love something, you don’t give up on it. You return to the forge and you try again, as many times as it takes. You examine your world through the critical eye of a surgeon. You determine what it was that lead to its demise, and then you pluck it out. You revise, then revise again, until someday, somehow, your world finds its soul and can live apart from you, as all great masterpieces do.”

Now, for the first time, Wendy turned the pages backward. She traced through her world’s evolution, from its birth at the core of a primordial star to its violent and premature end. There were, she realized, a great many things she would have done differently.

“It’s really okay to start over?” she asked.

The disciple flashed her an enigmatic smile.

“As many times as it takes.”

He left her to check on the other acolytes, but Wendy, knee-deep in the storms of Creation once more, hardly noticed.

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