At the dinner party, the man at the end of the table began holding forth on tides. He had never sailed and regarded this as an advantage, since expertise, he said, burdened people with received assumptions. The sea kept a schedule out of habit, not gravity, and the moon had very little to do with it. Beyond the windows, the harbor stopped receding.
Nobody noticed until he moved on to lighthouses and declared them largely ceremonial. Across the bay, the lamp went dark. He explained that storms gathered where people expected them, and clouds began assembling over the roof despite a clear forecast. By dessert, the older guests had stopped correcting him.
The hostess understood before anyone else. He was not predicting anything. The world was accommodating him.
His confidence had the force of definition. Anything described firmly enough seemed to become embarrassed by contradicting him. When he said the town had probably been founded around some forgotten bargain, a plaque appeared beside the fireplace commemorating one. When he dismissed the existence of deep-sea creatures larger than ships, something enormous beneath the harbor changed direction and never surfaced.
She tried changing the subject to politics. That proved worse. He declared that nations were essentially stories people agreed not to question, and three guests simultaneously forgot which country they had been born in. Her husband interrupted with a toast before the man could elaborate.
Outside, seawater had reached the garden wall.
The man laughed at everyone’s concern and explained that the sea could not simply decide to come ashore. Water had no intention, no memory, no preference. The tide withdrew so violently that boats dropped onto mud and fish thrashed hundreds of yards from the waterline.
Then he leaned back, pleased with himself, and announced that consciousness was probably much simpler than philosophers made it sound.
Every person at the table became very still.
The hostess reached across and knocked his wine into his lap before he could explain.
He stared at her, offended, while eleven guests began talking over one another at desperate volume. Nobody cared what they said, provided he could not finish a sentence about what a human being was.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
Leave a Reply