“I don’t know how it came to this. There’s trash all around us. That’s a dumpster. We’re hiding in an alleyway.”
“You asked a question.”
“It was just a question.”
“It was an important question. It was a question you needed to ask.”
“Was it worth it?”
“I think so. You had a moment. You met Satan at the crossroads. You realized you’d been walking with him for a while. You haven’t fallen to the level of trash; you’ve just now risen to it.”
“It was just a question.”
“No, it was the question. The question everyone has to ask. You asked it in a specific moment, in a specific language, in one particular way, but the question is asked by everyone eventually. Sometimes a man says, ‘Is this it?’ or he asks, ‘What am I doing?’ We ask because we know we will die, we ask because we feel pain, we ask because we know there’s something missing.”
“So what’s the answer? After all this, isn’t there an answer?”
“What was your question?”
“‘Why?’ I asked ‘Why?'”
“And that one syllable brought you here? A powerful word. ‘Why,’ it implies something, doesn’t it? You asked ‘Why?’ and they gave you answers, no doubt. You heard them, but you didn’t hear their voices, did you?—it was all the same voice, the same canned answer you yourself have given to others who asked before. ‘Why,’ asks for a reason, demands that there needs to be a reason for things. But reason is a god, reason is God, and there is nothing they hate more than God.”
“So what’s the answer? Why? Why! I want to know why.”
“Why do they demand ugliness and outlaw beauty? Why did you spend your professional life up to this point playing a role you don’t understand, working towards ends you can’t name? Because you’re a slave, you’re born a slave—that’s the answer they gave you, wasn’t it? Sure, it had many different forms, but it amounted to this: You—your eyes which see the world, your ears which hear, they were not allowed to hear or see what is, only what they were told to see and hear—you, a slave, are not allowed to think, to see, to have your own mind about things. That’s their answer, and mine is worse: Freedom. You should be free. That’s why.”
“Why is that a worse answer?”
“Because no one feeds a free man; and a free man has no place in all the kingdoms of the world; and when a free man falls, he falls. Slaves are fed, and even kings are slaves to their kingdoms; and a slave can no more fall than he’s given height to fall, and it is not even his own fall but his master’s. You chose when you asked. When your little syllable demanded reason, you chose freedom, chose your own eyes, your own ears, your own thoughts. You wanted truth, and you opened your eyes. Now you can see that you are surrounded by trash. You are no longer a slave.”
“Then I’m free?”
Tale Told 