Comma Submission Fall 2022 by Brian Gibson

In less than an instant, Light flooded the World and we all jolted awake. The World was so rarely alight, only coming on when the Adults were here to check on us. We spent most days playing in the dark and sleeping in clusters to keep one another warm when the heat went off. Very few of us minded. Our eyes had strengthened over the years to digest every morsel of Light we were given, pecking out the Lightbulbs’ afterglow from the atmosphere. Now that we had Light, we had to shield our eyes and curl up into our knees to protect ourselves.

Once we had adjusted, we could finally begin to use the Light to see all that we wanted to. Most of us looked at ourselves in our reflections off the ground, a uniform white that was so bright and clean that it was practically a mirror. I was K. I remembered as I stared into the ground. Medium height, red hair knotted into reaching tendrils, skin wrapped around muscle wrapped around bones wrapped around the unknowable Machines that pulsed with energy beneath my touch. I had nearly forgotten. When it was dark, it was easy to lose yourself. Often, I felt my eyes float high above the ground. If I wanted, I could become one of the Lightbulbs, where I could see what other children were doing and hear what they said when they thought nobody was listening. That was why the other children hated me so much. I knew everything about them and worse, they knew that I knew. We met with mutual knowledge, which can only ever create enemies. I could never see the Adults and as far as I knew, they did not see me either. Even my vision did not extend that far. The Adults liked me quite a lot.

My reflection looked completely serene. Then, I shrieked as loudly as I could, drawing in a huge breath and letting it loose in an instant. In the water, I watched the cords of my neck tense and vibrate in a strange dance. Every other child in the room stopped inspecting themselves to see who had made the sound. Some tried screaming themselves, which annoyed me for a reason I could not entirely understand.

“Why did you do that?” one of the Adults asked me. Before I had screamed, he had been walking through the rows of children, inspecting us for health. All the Adults covered their faces and bodies in a stiff mail of white mesh and steel-reinforced gloves, so that their bodies seemed to be extensions of the earth, pillars holding up nothing in particular. I recognized this man, however. I had begun privately calling him Nose because through his mesh mask, I could make out that his nose made up a bulbous portion of his face. I suspected he had problems with warts. I liked Nose, even if he was probably really ugly. Last inspection, when I had asked him for an extra Pad of Paper and something to write with, he had returned that night with it even though Adults were not allowed to bring new things to us. 

“Am I in trouble?” I asked. I didn’t want to jeopardize my relationship with my supplier. I was saving up goodwill to ask for a bundle of Rope and I couldn’t afford to let my efforts go to waste.

“Of course not. You didn’t break any rules,” Nose said. “I was just wondering, is all.”

“I wanted to see what I looked like when I did,” was what I went with.

“And how did you look?” Nose was clearly talking down to me now. Sometimes, he thought he was terribly clever, which was my least favorite trait of his, likely because I also thought I was terribly clever. I screamed again, not quite as loudly as before. I didn’t want to burst his ears out.

“Kind of like that,” I told him, adding in a wise nod for good measure.

Nose sighed dramatically, putting on a show of exasperation. He clearly wanted to tell me how annoying I was, that I ought to have respect for people simply on the basis of how long the World had made room for them. But since I knew what he would say, he had already lost my interest. Now, it was time to resume my mission to find the Edge of the World.

I started this personal quest a long time ago, when I first discovered that there was an Edge to be found. The World was made of one material, the same pure white expanse as the ground, and if you were not observing carefully, you would assume the World continued forever in all directions. And granted, it was vast. But if you truly looked, as I did one day during an inspection, you could find the creases where the ground met the Edge. The Edge formed a large circle around the World, meaning that our World was truly a Cylinder. A finite space. The idea was quite revolutionary, and it had done a thorough job of isolating me from my Group. They didn’t appreciate the thought that there was an end to the World, even though everything has an end at some point or another. We even conducted physical activity to confine our own waistlines to smaller spaces. It was absurd to resent the World for something so normal as having a waist. Among my Group, only my closest friend, M, saw it my way. She had the sense not to say so, however, and so I was the only one exiled. The day that I left to make my expedition was also the day that I first learned what crying was. Water drops traced grooves on her face; she sprung a leak. Thankfully, her inner Machinery got to working right soon enough. A leaky person was not always so easy to fix.

Nose had not left. He watched me intently. I could feel his stare now through the mesh. “When are you leaving?” he asked me.

“What do you mean?” I had already left years ago. I was well and truly exiled, as he knew. “I have nowhere to leave from.”

“Yes, you do. Do you think we don’t know what you write about on that pad of yours? You’re charting out a map.” Nose held out his hand and took the pad from me. He flipped through it quickly, not looking for anything in particular. I despaired; that meant he already knew what it contained.

“Take it if you have to,” I said, feeling a knot of snot and saliva forming in my throat. “Just let me keep my mission, please. I’ll have nothing left if you take that from me.”

Nose was amused by my sorrow. “I don’t want to take anything from you. Keep the pad, keep your mission. Hell, I want you to keep it all and don’t stop until you get out of this godforsaken place. I couldn’t say anything until now. You’re old enough now and smart enough to know some of my concerns.”

I shrunk back at the weight of this accusation and moreover, what it suggested about Adults. I had believed that Adults were the arms and fingers of the World. Nothing about them suggested that they had opinions. They simply reached and grabbed and moved us around to the places the World had chosen for us. If they had their own wills, then I had been gravely mistaken.

“Do you love this place?” he asked.

“I do,” I said. “I know it better than I know anything or anyone.”

He sighed sadly. “If that is the case, then the journey is your own to make. If you hated it here, I could take you myself. If I could, I would take every single one of you out of this hellhole. Of course, none of you would want to go. You don’t even know you’re rotting in here.”

“Stop!” I hissed. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing?” If he went on, the World would swallow him up in one bite. Useless things were not kept around for long. Dead fingers were amputated before they claimed the hand. If he went on, he would put each of us in terrible danger.

“Of course I do, K. I’ve thought for a long time about this, and I truly believe you’re our best hope. The other children are too dull, or too disinterested, or too fearful. But I’ve seen your expeditions. I read your notes. You’re the only one who can make it to the end of this place. You’re the only one who could even want to.”

“No, I couldn’t!” I exclaimed. But he was entirely right. I did want to find the Edge of the World, to reach out and touch it. Something in the act felt like claiming it as my own.

“When you find out what you need to know, you will. I can’t say much more now. This place is a Petri dish. The scraps from a failed experiment. It’s heinous. Pure evil. You’ll see too, soon enough.”

I walked a long way with no resistance from anyone. I drew stares from many of the children who made their residence in different corners of the World, but soon enough, the Lights came off and I was free to continue my expedition in peace. Certainly, what I was doing was not Normal or Polite. Most of the time, we chose not to Wander because Wandering meant risking not finding our way back, which was a social death sentence. Unless you were particularly well-liked at home, no one came looking for you. You had to pick up and start over in a new home with new people, who generally resented the Wanderers on the basis of loyalty alone. But I never got lost because, unlike most Wanderers, I knew how to Wander correctly. Rule one of Wandering: Always walk in a straight line. If you lost your nerve and took a turn, no matter how slight, you would never find your way back. Rule two: Count your paces. The applications of this ought to be obvious, and the thought always occurred to Wanderers sooner or later in their doomed journeys. Where they went wrong was in taking uneven paces. Before I even set out on my first expedition, I taught myself to take paces exactly the length of my right arm. That was the way the World wanted you to walk. Those who heeded its instructions were rewarded. Those who did not either died quickly or lived far too long. They lived Unnaturally.

As I walked, the World invented new challenges for me to conquer and prove my Value. But these challenges were not the usual ones. There was no mistaking it: the World was angry with me. It came at me with its full might. First, it stole away my Sight. I nearly fell over, shock momentarily grinding my body to a standstill. Even when the Lightbulbs were asleep, they sighed tiny puffs of Light that let us see. This was the first true Lightlessness. I began to walk fast, faster than I should have. Onetwo-onetwo. Leftright-leftright. Leftright-leftright-left. Right didn’t come. Instead, my foot caught on a sprawled-out limb, sending me tumbling headfirst into the Ground with a great, dull thud.

“Hey, who is that? What do you think you’re doing?” someone asked. It sounded like an older boy, with a deep voice nearing that of an Adult. He was not angry yet. If he had been, there would have been no hope for me.

But there was still a chance to escape. I lowered my voice, hoping his vision was as obscured as mine. “Go back to sleep,” I commanded. “Stand down.” I gave the order that Adults gave to break up fights that broke out during inspection. 

Thankfully, the older boy was rather stupid. No, that was not fair. In reality, he was a bright boy, bright enough to have wrested control of the gang and become a leader in his own fashion, but he was simply not a fan of thinking too much or too hard. “Terribly sorry about that, sir,” he said. Then, to his gang, he shouted, “Stand down, boys. It’s an Adult.”

There were murmurs among the gang of boys. Among the children, a healthy fear of the Adults dominated. We had seen what happened to the boys who disobeyed. They were never physically punished. Instead, when you misbehaved before an Adult, they clicked their tongue at you, loud enough that everyone heard. From then on, you were a misbehaver, a problem child. You were not trusted in your group. Slowly, slowly, you found that life went on around you, that nobody wanted to associate with you. Eventually, if things got dire enough, if you could not redeem yourself in time, receive that all-important nod from the Adult you had offended, you turned to Wandering. You did not know how to Wander, however, because the World had set itself against you and so you ended up lost in the Wide Gulches or chased down and beaten by a rival Group.

They thought of all this as they heard my command. But all boys are born angry. Some also remembered that Adults did not come out when it was dark. The murmurs became dark and suspicious. One of the boys cried out, a primal, territorial roar. Other boys responded in kind. I began creeping away. I had been found out.

The leader of the boys tried to stem the flood of anger that I had unleashed. “What do you think you’re doing? Do you want to get us killed?” And just like that, he was no longer their leader. He had only given them their war cry.

“That wasn’t an adult,” cried a boy from the mass. “It was a Wanderer!”

I ran. Ran like my feet couldn’t touch the Ground. I felt like I was flying on Land, even with no Sight and a throbbing foot. A thunder of boys was behind me, hollering and shouting insults and gathering nearby groups into their masses as they passed by. I began to see silhouettes pass through the corners of my Vision, outlines of outlines. I had passed the first Trial and now the next was upon me. 

The mass of children was converging upon me. Feet slammed against the ground, a steady patter of slaps, and there were nightmarish cries of rage and pain as children fell and began to be trampled. The crowd was thinning itself and slowly becoming one organism, a misshapen boulder of pale flesh, rolling and storing energy. The cries ceased. Now, all I heard as I ran was the sound of my own Body beginning to fail and the steady, malevolent hum from behind.

The Edge! The Edge was closing in on me, inviting me to the end of my expedition. My body churned and twisted and I nearly fell again and was lost to the Second Trial. If I continued, I would be crushed against the Edge of the World. If I stopped, I would be trampled and beaten into the Ground. My Sight had nearly returned now. The Lightbulbs huffed out their tiny breaths. Even the children chasing me had become marvelous. The World contained so many wonders. It had shown them all to me now, and I knew that I would die content. I hit the Edge now, pressing my back into its chilly embrace. The children knew that I was cornered now.

“Stand down!” barked a deep, throaty voice. An Adult was running toward me, shouting orders at the mob. Had the World truly decided to save me? My body gave out from under me, far overspent, and I sprung a leak. I could no longer control myself; my body was no longer my own.

The one who rescued me was Nose. He had been waiting for me, here all this time. Now that I was here, he allowed me to sleep, sitting upright against the Edge. When I awoke, deep black bruises spotted up and down my arms and legs. 

When I was well enough to eat, Nose fed me something new. It was a browned slab of flesh, scored with thin black lines and dots that flaked off if you touched them.

“What is this?” I asked him, holding it far out from my chest with both hands.

“Steak,” he told me. “It’s made of animal meat. Flesh. Not anything like you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I had not even considered the possibility. Truth be told, what food was made of had not even occurred to me as a question that ought to be asked. Food was Food, and Children were Children, and Adults were Adults. All these things were distinct. I held the steak closer, brought it to my teeth. The Steak was pink in the middle and filled with juice that coated my tongue and ran down my chin. I spat out the mouthful, taken aback by what I tasted. I had never tasted before. Food had no essence to it, no flavor, and so Steak was not what I expected it to be. But it was wonderful! Greater than anything I had ever experienced before. I ate it greedily, tearing off mouthfuls larger than I could chew and panting for breath between bites.

Nose chewed thoughtfully on his own meal that he had pulled out of his suit. He never removed his face shield, not even to eat. He simply retracted his arms into his suit so that his suit grew a huge chest and floppy arms. “What do you think?”

“It’s—” I stopped. There were no words for it. “Steak.”

He laughed. “So it is,” he agreed. “There’s far more than just that out there. There’s food in all different flavors.”

I tried to imagine it. Steaks in all flavors. It sounded otherworldly.

“There are people too. Animals, plants, insects, buildings, books. I’m sorry that I can’t explain them to you. I wish I could. There’s just too much.”

“Do you go outside the World?” I asked. “I just don’t understand how all that can be true.”

“Because this isn’t a world,” he said. “It’s not anything. It’s a monument to human cowardice. Do you want to know what there is outside of here?”

I longed to say yes. It was right there, one word away. But doing so would be to betray the World, to break the bond we shared. Nose loomed over me, even sitting down. Looking up at him, I suddenly felt that his presence was evil and I knew where I was. This was the Final Trial. The World was testing my strength of will.

He said nothing and just waited, his presence growing larger and more irresistible by the moment. He towered over me, this final test, holding out everything that I longed for in one hand and nothing in the other. “Do you want to know?” he asked again.

I felt teardrops again, rolling off my chin and into my lap. I whispered to him and he removed his mask and began to speak.

Once upon a time, in a land not far from your house and from around the same time, there lived a man, a woman, and then, a many-times-great grandchild. The man was a genius. Geniuses are a terribly lonely species, and this man would have been no different if he had not had his pen pals. In his free time, he wrote letters to faraway galaxies. He told them about his parents, his teachers, his bullies, his country, and all of humanity, when he had the chance. Unfortunately, his science teacher informed him that his pen pals would not be able to read his writing. The boy went home and tore many of the letters to shreds. But for the remaining letters, the boy invented a pictograph system, inspired by the Voyager records that had been tossed into orbit by a group of meddlesome scientists. He recorded the sounds of his speech and provided a transcript so that his pen pals would be able to learn English. He even gave them a map, so that they could come and whisk him away from the world.

Then, for many long years, the boy was distracted by growing up and he forgot his pen pals. He was accepted to MIT, studied astrophysics, and began his work plumbing the deepest recesses of space humans could reach with their glorified jet engines. It was not until he met the woman that he remembered his pen pals. She taught children for a living. The man and woman fell in love, as they were wont to do, and were married within two years. One day, when the woman was dusting the cabinets of their study, she found the box of letters. It was a private matter, but she could not help herself and spent the entire afternoon reading his letters to no one in particular. She was so moved by them, so in love with her husband, that she resolved to deliver his letters to space. She asked the man to deposit them within the next satellite leaving the facility. At first, he was wary—leaving unauthorized items anywhere in the facilities went against every work instinct that had been stamped into him by years of grad school—but the man and woman so loved each other that he would defy NASA for her.

The letters were sealed in a vacuum container and sent uncountable miles away, stowed away in secret. There they stayed for millions of years, unopened, until we found them floating twenty-six million miles outside of our orbit. We learned your language first, and then we learned about the life of that man. The parts about the bullies and the country, we skimmed over. We were very interested in parents and teachers, however. Humans had such odd inventions. Some were even quite ingenious. We came soon after to Earth. The boy was long since dead, as was the woman. Not that they mattered. They had long since run their course. We spread and integrated ourselves into your society. We taught you how to build with our architecture, synthesize our food, even to love, think, and see in the way that we did.

But the grandchild feared us. She called us invaders and parasites, and foul names that we cannot bear to repeat and that you should not be subjected to hearing. But what she did that was most unforgivable was to take you from us. She amassed an army of followers and built a massive bunker, stealing away our unborn children and hiding them from us, where they could never grow beyond their fetal states. She stole all of you, my loves. Now we can never be whole. Not until you are all returned to us, until we can become one. I found my way into the enemy’s lair, disguised myself as one of them, so that we could be reunited. 

Nose removed his mask, and for the first time, I saw his face. His nose, mouth, and chin were human, but instead of two eyes, his entire cranium was infested with eyes. They were squeezed together, bulging and lidless. When his gaze shifted direction, every single iris darted to the side. He was a living optical illusion.

I laid down before him. From his suit, he withdrew a scalpel. He made the first incision in the middle of my brow and a surge of pain racked my body. Blood bubbled up to the skin, but it did not run. It boiled. From beneath the bubbling blood, I felt something new emerging, a growth out of my head. My vision became smeared with the boiling blood. He made another incision. With each new incision, my vision grew wider and further. I saw my ears myself, with no help from any reflection. New colors began to swirl into familiar shapes, and I wondered if they had always existed or if I was simply going mad with pain. The incisions now scored my entire forehead. Now, he removed from his suit a razorblade and began to shave my hair, chopping away the thick, tangled knots from my skull. My head began to feel lighter. I had been carrying around that burden all my life and not even known. As he continued to make incisions, they began to hurt less. The pain that I felt was simply the relief of even greater pain. This could not have been harm. Only removing outgrown skin.

When the blood evaporated and I arose, I realized that I saw anew. I saw in every direction for miles. I knew things I had no way of knowing. In the center of the bunker, my old friends were shifting in their sleep, piled together like a herd of animals. A colony of bacteria festering in their dish. The boys who had chased me were now fighting, blaming one another for letting a Wanderer escape. I lifted the door to Earth and then it swung shut without a sound.