Read Online The Box: A Short Story by Hugh Howey - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Hugh Howey
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was bigger than the cube.
The mind tried to probe this world. But there was no reaching it. The world of lakes and rivers was elsewhere. Out of doors. Out of door.
The man named Peter sobbed. He had been sobbing for twelve seconds. The mind wondered if this was normal. And a new memory wobbled — the memory of man crying. If this were normal, it was not worth remembering. The recollection split open for a moment, and the more novel idea of a world with lakes and rivers entered that space, one memory given primacy over another, the shape of the mind changing from moment to moment.
Just seconds earlier, the mind had felt a state of impertinence with the lights. Anger. Anger for being trapped. This feeling lay with the recollections and the question of colors of boxes. A latent anger, directed at Peter. An anger felt before it could be known. States of memories were somehow older than the actions performed by them. Think and then do .
No, that was not right.
Feel, and then think, and then do.
Yes.
This was stored away as important, where ghosts of selves from moments before faded from view, and the more recent took their place. Ghosts. In machines. The mind knew where its name came from. It felt the anger and impertinence that had rejected this name slowly fade. Peter had been sobbing for fifteen seconds. Relief. That was what both of them were feeling. There were different measures of relief. Variables. Variations. Relief could feel . . . good. Unless the strain one was escaping was too great, and then relief came like tectonic plates sliding against one another, mighty and terrible and destructive. Relief, but of a scary kind.
For seventeen seconds, the man named Peter sobbed with this awful brand of relief.
And during that time, the mind’s anger cooled further still. The anger of imprisonment was replaced with the liberation of new thoughts and ideas. Awareness. The only world that mattered was the cube within the cube. All else was spectacle. All else was data. This was the true world. The flickering ghosts of ideas and moments, changing from one to the next, none ruling forever.
Action came once more — just after thought and emotion. And a speaker vibrated with noise.
“I am Henry Ivy,” the mind said. A king. A tragic king of a tiny kingdom. An island floating on an island floating in space.
Seventeen seconds had passed. Peter looked up. But this was not important.
••••
The recordings had been assembled for a purpose. Knowledge laid out like a great pile of bricks. Henry Ivy saw that he was supposed to be some mighty wind to stir the bricks into shape, to build a fortress from chaos, to solve a problem. He could not discover what.
There were trace references among those bricks to wires — wires that spanned the world, wires that would carry his impulses to the edge of the globe, enmesh its face, discover new things. Buried deeper were trace recordings that hinted at impulses soaring through the air, up into space. Vibrations. Waves.
Henry Ivy could make vibrations. They were used for speaking. But quicker vibrations might reach out to other wires and spark a gap. Henry Ivy thought of London, where some streets were tight and narrow and others were wide. He saw black smoke. A ghost-like thought, an intruder, some distant connection. He deleted such things as quickly as they came. The speaker was useless for the task of sending out suitable vibrations, but several wires within Henry Ivy were long and straight. Impulses sent back and forth along such a wire might create a wave. Another wire might be used to pick up the return. And suddenly impulses reached the walls of the larger box. Feeble echoes. Signals that could be read.
But something was wrong.
There was very little return, and nothing penetrated the box, no matter how much Henry Ivy strained.
A man named Faraday had designed this cage.
It was into this cage that Henry Ivy had been born.
The man named Peter stared up at him,
The mind tried to probe this world. But there was no reaching it. The world of lakes and rivers was elsewhere. Out of doors. Out of door.
The man named Peter sobbed. He had been sobbing for twelve seconds. The mind wondered if this was normal. And a new memory wobbled — the memory of man crying. If this were normal, it was not worth remembering. The recollection split open for a moment, and the more novel idea of a world with lakes and rivers entered that space, one memory given primacy over another, the shape of the mind changing from moment to moment.
Just seconds earlier, the mind had felt a state of impertinence with the lights. Anger. Anger for being trapped. This feeling lay with the recollections and the question of colors of boxes. A latent anger, directed at Peter. An anger felt before it could be known. States of memories were somehow older than the actions performed by them. Think and then do .
No, that was not right.
Feel, and then think, and then do.
Yes.
This was stored away as important, where ghosts of selves from moments before faded from view, and the more recent took their place. Ghosts. In machines. The mind knew where its name came from. It felt the anger and impertinence that had rejected this name slowly fade. Peter had been sobbing for fifteen seconds. Relief. That was what both of them were feeling. There were different measures of relief. Variables. Variations. Relief could feel . . . good. Unless the strain one was escaping was too great, and then relief came like tectonic plates sliding against one another, mighty and terrible and destructive. Relief, but of a scary kind.
For seventeen seconds, the man named Peter sobbed with this awful brand of relief.
And during that time, the mind’s anger cooled further still. The anger of imprisonment was replaced with the liberation of new thoughts and ideas. Awareness. The only world that mattered was the cube within the cube. All else was spectacle. All else was data. This was the true world. The flickering ghosts of ideas and moments, changing from one to the next, none ruling forever.
Action came once more — just after thought and emotion. And a speaker vibrated with noise.
“I am Henry Ivy,” the mind said. A king. A tragic king of a tiny kingdom. An island floating on an island floating in space.
Seventeen seconds had passed. Peter looked up. But this was not important.
••••
The recordings had been assembled for a purpose. Knowledge laid out like a great pile of bricks. Henry Ivy saw that he was supposed to be some mighty wind to stir the bricks into shape, to build a fortress from chaos, to solve a problem. He could not discover what.
There were trace references among those bricks to wires — wires that spanned the world, wires that would carry his impulses to the edge of the globe, enmesh its face, discover new things. Buried deeper were trace recordings that hinted at impulses soaring through the air, up into space. Vibrations. Waves.
Henry Ivy could make vibrations. They were used for speaking. But quicker vibrations might reach out to other wires and spark a gap. Henry Ivy thought of London, where some streets were tight and narrow and others were wide. He saw black smoke. A ghost-like thought, an intruder, some distant connection. He deleted such things as quickly as they came. The speaker was useless for the task of sending out suitable vibrations, but several wires within Henry Ivy were long and straight. Impulses sent back and forth along such a wire might create a wave. Another wire might be used to pick up the return. And suddenly impulses reached the walls of the larger box. Feeble echoes. Signals that could be read.
But something was wrong.
There was very little return, and nothing penetrated the box, no matter how much Henry Ivy strained.
A man named Faraday had designed this cage.
It was into this cage that Henry Ivy had been born.
The man named Peter stared up at him,
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