On a dark night, heavy with storms and ice-nine, the world was found murdered in a San Lorenzan hotel bedroom. Witnesses rushed over to check, but by that time people had already spent years and years re-searching for it. Its body was cold. The warmth of life had left it.
The detective (a passing reader who also happened to be a close relative of the world's) looked through the suspects and possible murder weapons with a grumpy expression on his face.
The facts:
A shard of Human Ignorance had been found lying in the corner of the room, hidden under a watery fabric that the owner of the hotel kept insisting was called "foma". They protested loudly when the detective tried to remove it and examine the weapon for possible bloodstains. The witness insisted that there was nothing underneath it, and on top of that, they needed the foma for keeping themselves warm in the winter. They refused to allow it to be removed to the detective's evidence locker.
The detective found this quite interesting. The winters were not actually all that cold -- but the room was. After a little more hunting, the detective stumbled upon something labeled "Truth". It was in the shape of a gun, and along its handle the words "Now I will destroy the world" were written on it. When the detective picked it up to examine it more closely they had to immediately drop it. It was ice-cold, and giving off waves of freezing air.
It would be a possibility for the murder weapon, except that the witness refused to tell the detective anything about it. Actually, the witness said that it wasn't there, that they had never seen anything like it before, even though it was clear they had from the way their gaze always slid away from it every time it accidentally made contact with the object.
The detective tried to point out that if they just warmed the Truth up, they wouldn't even need the foma anymore, and they could put it in the evidence locker, as well as better examine the murder weapon. The witness didn't answer.
The four main suspects were Felix Hoenikker, a man called Bokonon, a man called Jonah, and the owner of the hotel.
None of them had any alibis or anything to say for themselves at all.
What did the detective do? It was hard to decide. There was a dead body on the floor, two non-existent murder weapons, and a bunch of silent suspects. In all honesty, there was no case. Who killed the world, and with what?
It suddenly hit him. A thought very dark and deep in his consciousness, far removed from the muscles of his face as he stared out the window into the stormy skies.
This was not a case about the facts. The murderer would be -- whoever the detective said he was. And the motive would be the simple idea that the world must have forced them -- each and every one of them -- to exist.
From the beginning, perhaps... this case was already closed.
Fantastic story, Emma! I thoroughly enjoyed reading what, to me, emerges as a parody of a parody of "Human Ignorance." But my favorite section of your tale came at the end, or is it the beginning? And it only occurred to me halfway through that if the world were killed, who's writing this text? So I was truly stunned (in a very positive way) by the way you managed to maintain the written paradox... to display a dynamic tension immediately illustrative of Vonnegut's own toying w/ (leveling w/?) his readers. This tension is nothing if not apropos of how we *might* read ourselves. Well done. Well done, indeed.
ReplyDeleteEmma, you've done it again.
ReplyDeleteThis was a brilliant piece that brings in parts of Vonnagut's work in a way that is original. I love the story plot. In a way, they all did help murder the world. It's just a matter of what the reader interprets it as. That, like Vonnagut's work, is probably the biggest part of it all. (I personally blame them all and would construct an elaborate tale to convict them all if I was the detective, but that's just me.)
Now where's the fav button?