What am I doing here, why all this toil?

He nudged him.
"What the heck, all this road to see this?"
Melchior smiled. "Be patient. Everything is small, before growing up."

The last boundary

To GKC

I have travelled long and far, until the final boundary of the Universe. The galaxies speed away to my sides like flies in the summer afternoons, million worlds danced around me in wavering vortices. I escaped, through the black night of the cosmos and the red gold of nebulas. They said that I had stolen. True, according to their judgment. According to their reason. But between the infinites universes above us, I have thought, what means their affirmation that God himself is bound by reason? There will be a place where the reason is utterly unreasonable. And therefore I have taken this ship, and have left.
The motor grinders the light years without effort, towards that world that escapes from the law of the truth. And I have arrived here, to the last limbo, the lost borderland of the things. The forests are made of adamant with leaves of brilliants, that hurt who graze them. The blue moon a single elephantine sapphire that enlights the flaming horizon and the spangled sky, like the eye of a pale giant. Under me the land is smooth and milky, with veins of rainbow. On these plains of opal rise high cliffs cut out of pearl, the titanic gift of forgotten creatures .

The figurine is beautiful to stop the heart, also if made by alien hands. I have taken it. And now I lie here, my muscles knot by unknown forces, while strange brown creatures come towards me. Their biology I cannot understand, neither their writing. But now I know for sure that reason and justice of conduct hold in their grip also the farthest and lonely star; and, even if do not know their strange-shaped alphabet, I succeed to interpret the notice-board in front of me as if it was written in my native language. It says: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’

The last equation

"We got it! We got the proof! We made it!"
There were handshakes, hugs, cheers. Someone had tears in his eyes. Doctor Lapietra was euphoric. He seized the shoulders of Jeremy, his assistant.
"Do You realize what we have made? Do You realize?" he said.
He realized for sure. It was the completion of years of work. Better, it was the completion of countless thousand years of men's work, since the beginning of time.
The model has been completed. Up to the last law. The last equation has been discovered. Man now knows exactly how the Universe was made, from the giant galaxy to the smaller subatomic particle.
His assistant didn't seem so glad.
"Jeremy, what happens?" asked Lapietra "We have found it, that bloody equation. Now all is in its place."
Jeremy's voice was dull, like dead. "Sure. Now we know how everything is made. So we are unemployed."
Lapietra frowned. "What do you mean?"
Jeremy made a vague gesture with his hand. "Now we understand everything. We will have to write down documentation, to publish our findings, demonstrate them at meetings and conferences. Then? We are researchers, and there is nothing more to research. All has been found. We are useless. Our is a dead profession, just like biologists and farriers."
The scientist shook his head. "Don't be so dramatic! We are the highest point of history. Just think how world will change..."
The assistent stopped him. "It is from thousand years that man think to know how the world goes on. Now we are certain about it. But everyone else was already certain. The keeper at door down there don't know about our equation and will never understand it, but has lived and will live in the same way now that we have found it. My grand-grandmother believed in a thing called "universal gravitation", didn't knew about Bosgway's field, and died happy. My children will study that we have made this finding, but apart from this how will change them to know that somewhere there is someone that knows the way Universe behaves?
Lapietra opened the mouth to reply, then shut it. In the end, there was nothing else to say. It was all already said.
The scientist was thoughtful while stepping on the transferrer. He entered into his home. His wife was programming the autochef and didn't even rose her head. "Hello, dear. Everything fine at work?"
Lapietra wished to say "We found the last brick in understanding the Universe", but somehow wasn't able to speak the words.
He said instead "Yes, dear. And you?"
But his wife was already lost in what she was doing. At last she started the autochef. "Good, dear", she told. "We'll have soup this evening."
The scientist said nothing, but within him sighed. He didn't like soup.

Into the darkness

Tommy stopped on the threshold. A dim light poured out from the half-closed door. It was not enough to illuminate the black corridor ahead. The darkness seemed to eat it all, and the floor disappeared in an obscure nothingness just inches beyond his feet.
Don't be afraid, mum always said. Don't be afraid: there are no monsters in the dark, the light lacks but everything else is just the same. Don't be afraid.
But the darkness was just ahead of him, untouchable, and Tommy wasn't able to make a single step. She might be right, sure. No monsters.
But how can he know?
In the darkness there can be anything. A trapdoor. A killer. A vampire. And things far worse. Things that cannot be named, those things that jump and crawl into every night from the beginning of the world.
Children know this. Children are not like the grown-up boys, eager to launch themselves into the uncertain and the unknown. Children are fragile, and they know it very well. Children are afraid.
And Tommy hesitated on the threshold, and only the knowledge that he must go on and reach the end of the corridor, that it was what they expected from him, kept him from running away.
He froze, and withheld his breath. Was it a noise? There was a noise, ahead? Something in the darkness?
I have been bad, he thought. If I would have been a good boy now I wouldn't be so afraid.
The noise, or the feeling of a noise, again.
He sharpened his eyes, but the long corridor was a pit of blackness. Nothing could be seen in it, and unspeakable horrors were lurking in its deeps.
He wanted to run away. He wanted to escape. He wanted to have been a good boy, or to be one of those mighty heroes of the fantasy tales.
But he was not one of them, and his legs were now heavier than concrete, struck in the floor. Just like sinking in the mud of a putrid swamp.
A noise, again.
No mistake.
Something was coming.
Again. Louder.
Coming this way.
Big. Something big.
Steps.
Steps are coming this way.
Heavy, forceful.
Steps are coming nearer.
They are near.
Very near.
Too much near.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to say "I am a good boy", also if it was a lie.
He wanted to cry mercy.
He wanted to cry forgiveness.
But his mouth was dry, spitless.
His legs like deadwood.
And, suddenly, something big, huge, enormous came out of the darkness and stopped in front of him.
His heart stopped.
Then he rose his head and saw, in the dim light just outside the threshold, his father's face.
Smiling at him.
And stretching his forceful, huge hand towards him.
Tommy felt the knot inside him melt away. No matter if he hasn't been a good boy. No matter if horrors lurked in the darkness. He was now with his father, and with him he can go anywhere.
He took the hand that was given to him, and stepped out along that corridor that now seemed not so dark.

The surgeon sighed. The pen worked badly and the writing was blotted. "Okay, let's see. Hour of death...8:35 PM. What was his name?
"Thomas" said the nurse, looking at the still face of the old man. It was white and tense in what could be a last spasm, or perhaps a smile.


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