Full Vessels (2 page)

She spoke first. “Everyone embodies the form
they first encountered another Observer. That means Iteration one
for us.”

“Makes sense.”

Elza nodded. “I'll see you at the
meeting.”

He watched her resume her trip downstairs,
then re-opened the door and went to sit on the bed, head in his
hands.

After fifteen minutes, he went downstairs.
Elza sat in the conference room with San, Jerome, and Greg, which
sent him retreating to the restaurant's bar where Drake, Griff,
Kerzon, and Ingrid were availing themselves of the abundant
merchandise. Kerzon smacked him on the back as he went to order.
“Hey, last time all of us were together, we were watching Erik
torture the shit out of you.”

“I wasn't there,” Ingrid said.

Kerzon waved that away. “Ya, but we thought
you were.”

Ingrid scowled. “We punished Hess in
Iteration one four three for conquering most of a world. That was
the end of it. You failed to justify your vendetta past that.”

“Relax, Ingrid, we're all friends now.”
Kerzon slammed an open bottle down in front of Hess. “See? I'll
even share my whiskey. If Hess winks the right way, I might even
take him to bed. You're damn easy on the eyes in that body, you
know. I can see why you got the girl. Elza getting you, on the
other hand . . . . Well, I guess that's a lesson in personal taste.
No accounting, right?”

Hess took a sip of the whiskey before passing
it back. “Was that whiskey or kerosene?”

“Right? It's all shit, everything I've
sampled so far. Guess the Creator didn't spring for top shelf
liquor.” Kerzon moved away to speak with Griff.

Hess ordered a dry red wine, whose cardboard
flavor revealed the bottle to be corked. He drank it anyway,
standing beside Drake, neither of them speaking.
This is going
to be one hell of a week.

Sometime before the hour was up, Natalia
arrived and ordered a drink of rum with a wedge each of lemon and
ginger. She saw his attention and raised her glass in toast. “All
of this is quite unexpected.” Wrinkled skin hung from her twig-like
bones, but she moved with a lithe grace that belied her
appearance.

Soon after, they followed a line of wait
staff carrying tureens full of steaming food to the conference
room. The entire group present, they piled plates full of fried
fish, boiled potatoes, crab bread, and vegetable medley. Forks
scraped plates and throats gulped.

The noises of dining gave way to the sounds
of gruff conversation. Kerzon and Griff, already drunk, competed in
some game that involved coin flips and guzzling straight from
bottles. Erik was busy terrorizing Drake. San spun a tale of
skydiving without a parachute. All of them seeking to project their
voice above the others. Hess settled back in his seat and waited
for time to pass.

Greg interrupted the party by climbing onto
the table, moving with the casual efficiency of a sober man. He
turned in slow circles, hands waving in a bid for attention.
“Everyone, please let me speak. This is a conference, not a
drinking contest. We can't expect to provide any value to the
Creator if we treat this week as some sort of house party. I
suggest we establish some ground rules to make this process more
productive.”

Kerzon belched. “Want me to stop drinking?
Too bad.”

Greg squinted down at him. “Let's meet in the
mornings. Then you can have the evenings to fill any way you want.
Does that sound fair?”

No one responded. Greg spoke to Mel. “We'll
start at nine in the morning.”

Mel nodded. “Agreed. Are you leading our
discussions?”

“I would rather not,” Greg said. “My idea was
to take turns presenting. If two of us go each day, we'll finish at
the end of the week. The current state of intoxication leads me to
believe that today will not be a productive meeting. So everyone
should be prepared to present in the morning.”

Griff squinted up at Greg. “Present
what?”

“Your most significant observations, whatever
those might be.”

Ingrid stood, speaking as she walked to the
door. “I think that's an excellent suggestion. The last thing I
want to do during my last week is participate in another Observer
party. I'll see everyone at nine.”

Hess followed her out and returned to his
yellow room.

The complimentary breakfast consisted of
bread, butter, and fruit preserves. Hess refueled his body in
solitude, watching the people and other Observers from his corner
of the room. After a tedious night, he felt the urge to escape the
resort and explore the surrounding island.
I'll look around
after the meeting is over. I need to get the lay of the land if I'm
going to spend time here after the others leave.

After his meal, he found his way to the
conference room and sat in a seat that presented a good view of the
door. Greg, the only other occupant, sat near him. “Good morning,
Hess.”

“I wish it was, Greg.”

“Can I depend on your cooperation?”

Hess shrugged. “I'll speak when it's my
turn.”

“Would you keep some of our more reactive
elements in line?”

He snorted. “I would if I could.”

Greg lowered his voice. “You are the only one
who has ever been able to influence Erik. Given the circumstances
of the previous Iteration, I believe his opinions of us have only
been exacerbated.”

“Erik will behave,” Hess said.

“Apparently not. Last night, Drake discovered
the severed head of a young man in his room. Before our conference
even begins, he is murdering the locals and framing the rest of us
for the crime.”

Hess sighed. “Does Drake need help disposing
of it?”

“That was handled. What we need is for you to
distract Erik.”

“I can't promise anything.”

“Just try.”

“Sure. I'll try.”

As nine o'clock arrived, the other Observers
filed into the room, bringing with them a sullen silence. They sat
around the table with arms folded or reclined to watch the ceiling
or hunched over in apathetic study of their own hands. Greg cleared
his throat. “Shall we begin?”

Drake pushed to his feet. “Screw that. I got
something to say. We need to do something about Erik.”

“Oh, do we now?” Erik bared his teeth in a
predator's smile. “Pray tell, tit-sucker. What you got
planned?”

“You put that fucking head on my night
stand.”

Erik raised his hands in mock surprise. “A
head? On your night stand? Oh my lucky stars. I am just beside
myself. Who would do such a thing? My guess is
Twelve
. All
we know about that guy is he's deceptive as fuck.”

“Everyone knows it was you,” Drake said. “You
better watch yourself, Erik, we're not happy with you.”

“Oh, cupcake, you hurt my feelings. I can't
believe you don't like my presents. Why, you didn't even mention
the hand.” Erik held his wrist up to his mouth so his fingers
projected out before his face. “I put a fucking hand inside the
mouth to wave hello. Better than flowers, I thought.”

Erik's smile continued to meet Drake's glare,
growing more intense as his opponent's ire morphed into discomfort.
Drake sat with a huff, crossing his arms and turning his gaze
away.

Greg spoke quickly. “So who wants to go
first?”

“You go,” Griff said. “This was your
idea.”

“This is the Creator's idea.” Greg fidgeted
in his seat. “I only suggested adding some structure. Should we go
in alphabetical order?”

In response, Drake fixed a glare on Greg.

“Fine. Then someone else decide the order of
presentation. I'm tired of being the responsible party.”

Griff grunted. “You're not any kind of
party.”

Natalia stood. With all eyes on her, she
glided to the cupboard like a gray-haired ghost and withdrew paper,
pencil, and an envelope. Her knobby hands folded the sheet of paper
into regular sections and tore it on the lines with rapid
precision. She scribbled numbers down onto twelve scraps, folded
each in half, and swept them into the envelope.

Without a word, she went around the table,
holding the envelope for each of them to draw a number. As Hess
drew, he noticed Natalia had trapped a slip of paper between her
fingers and the side of the envelope. It was a clumsy bit of
sleight of hand, but he didn't think anyone else noticed. Even had
he cared to point out her deception, he had drawn number
eleven.

After Natalia returned to her seat, she
folded her hands in her lap and nodded to Greg in a gesture that
made clear she intended to do no more. The attention of everyone
drifted back to Greg. He shrugged. “Who has number one?” Griff
tossed his scrap of paper onto the table.

Greg continued to count off the numbers. Mel
was second, Drake third, Ingrid fourth, then Elza, Erik, Greg,
Kerzon, San, Jerome, Hess, and finally Natalia. “Then that is our
order of presentation. Are you ready to speak, Griff? Or do you
need a short break to prepare?”

“Don't matter either way.”

“Then everyone please give Griff your full
attention.”

Griff sat with hands folded on the table
before him, brows shading shifty eyes that scanned back and forth
as if reading from invisible note cards. For over two minutes,
Griff kept them waiting in silence. When he finally spoke, he did
so in a deliberative monotone, pausing often in mid-sentence to
select his words.

“I don't know that my opinion on existence is
particularly deep or . . . insightful or . . . worthy or anything
like that. Most of you are smarter than I ever claimed to be. So
maybe my ideas are like Observation one-oh-one and the rest of
y'all got doctorates in Observation-ology. I'll try not to . . .
belabor the points too much, but I can't go too quick on account of
. . . me never thinking I would have to explain my thoughts . . .
and having to go first and so on and so forth.”

Griff licked his lips, glared at the patch of
table in front of him, and continued in a softer voice. “Thing is,
all the while I've been watching the people and the world and all
that, I've been thinking in the back of my head 'all this
hullabaloo is fake,' you know? I mean, worlds pop into being
thinking they've always been. Same with us, right? How do we know
we actually lived a hundred forty-five Iterations? Maybe this
resort is the first real world and we just think we have histories
like the people.”

Griff rapped his knuckles on the table. “And
what
is
this? Really, what is stuff made out of? Creator
took nothing and turned it into something. You ever really think
about that? Call it matter or particles or strings or whatever you
want, but I think it's still nothing. Little pieces of nothing the
Creator tricked into thinking they were something.

“Or maybe this is all a grand play happening
inside the Creator's mind and there isn't any stuff to speak of,
just the
idea
of stuff that we all treat like the real deal
cause we don't know any better. Whole worlds come and go, but none
of them were ever really here, if you know what I'm saying.”

For a minute, Griff went silent, brow
scrunched in deep thought. When he continued, his voice came
louder, deeper. “There's . . .
ramifications
. . . to ideas
like that. Everything is made from nothing and everything goes back
to nothing when we're done with it. Even us. Maybe even the
Creator, for all we know. All of us are little pieces of nothing
waiting to unravel.

“Think about it. If matter's made out of
nothing, then maybe nothing matters. I mean, every world ends up
the same as every other, collapsing back into . . . non-existence.
They all start the same way, too, as nothing whipped up into the
appearance of something.

“Really think about all of this. Every world
is . . . fundamentally . . . identical. Start as nothing, end as
nothing. Made out of nothing. Any differences are illusion.”

Griff shook his head. “Now if you've followed
me this far, then you see the big problem . . . the conundrum. Or
maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure my way out of this maze.”
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, if you buy that everything is
nothing and every world is pretty much the same, then you got to
ask yourself: why are we observing anything?

“Think about it, guys. Really think about it.
Matter's nothing and nothing matters. And our whole purpose is
what? To care about nothing? Maybe our purpose is nothing. We are
nothing, right? Maybe the Creator is a lie that something exists.
Just this concept floating in emptiness that thinks, and thinking
makes these illusions happen.”

Griff shrugged his shoulders. “However it all
works, the fact is that, in the end, everything ends and is
forgotten, us included. Nothing we ever observed or did actually
mattered. Maybe I'm not a very good Observer, cause quite frankly I
never worked too hard at it. I never sought out anything that
wasn't right in front of me or ran little experiments like the rest
of y'all. I just watched things happen and . . . doubted the
significance.

“So . . . that's my take on existence.”

No one spoke until Greg cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Griff. I appreciate your willingness to not only go
first, but to so unreservedly state your opinion. Does anyone care
to start the discussion?”

“I would,” Hess said. All eyes turned to him.
“If you believe nothing matters, then why join the conspiracy
against me twice? You helped bury me alive in Iteration one forty
three, then tried to do the same in one forty four. It doesn't seem
like you buy into your own philosophy.”

Erik chuckled. “Looks like Griff don't like
the smell of his own shit.”