An Ordinary Object, Or Two

It seems perfectly ordinary. A water bottle, yet it is impossible.

When I picked up the bottle, it seemed simple enough. A plain, plastic Nalgene bottle, with a pink and green REI sticker and a black plastic cap—obviously a replacement for the original. I took it over to the faucet, turned on the water and watched it run uselessly over the sides—nothing went in. I peered into the top—nothing. Empty and normal. I tried again. Once again, the water uselessly spilled over the sides. I stared into it, stuck my finger in—all clear. Empty. Again, I ran the water and still nothing went in. I replaced the cap and set it on the counter, eyeing it warily. Finally, I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. Immediately, flashes of color caught my attention from the bottom of the bottle. As I flipped it up, the edges of the plastic seemed to disappear and I was a tiny speck of light flung into an infinite sea of particles, energy, and chaos. There was no bottle, there was no me, just a speck in the maelstrom of a vast and tiny universe. My brain must have hiccupped—I felt my eyes close instinctively, or at least activate whatever neurons used to be connected to my optic nerve and fell out of the bottle again. Once more standing in my kitchen, thirsty and confused, holding a universe in my hands.

A Watch

I’m watching the hands of a clock tick. No, the seconds on a digital watch because analogue is dead. Tick, tick, tick is now replaced with the hypnotic count.

Steady counting one second after another until it stops. My brain is caught, almost like it’s falling waiting for next number that never came. Time stopped, though not enough—I’m still free enough to crave the boundary its illusion provided. It’s not time that stopped, it’s the mirage of my control over the universe that it provided. I wrote that other sentence incorrectly.