Author: Matt Ingoldby

‘Room’ conjures three dimensions of no specific shape. This will have to do.
‘Waiting room’ seems speciously appropriate except that it conjures time – not apt for eternal, infinite multitudes like us. Nonetheless, we are all waiting, most of us since before there was a universe to lay time across.
In your misleading and dimensionally-confused parlance, we have waited ‘a very long time’.
In the waiting room (okay, okay) we dwell. Though we exist at no point, there is a queue. It may shock you to learn that social laws have existed long before the laws of physics.
#953426304582635402390839472-69476029864324538763406578530692876-862-629867534857634876553875623984762342364876238676260000624626230462346200000032426346328756438765235782364 is my friend.
#953426304582635402390839472-69476029864324538763406578530692876-862-629867534857634876553875623984762342364876238676260000624626230462346200000032426346328756438765235782364 is dreaming of what they will achieve in life: “I don’t care what others say,” they muse warm-heartedly (the words are my own). “I’ll still remember. I’ll come and find you, breather to breather, wherever you end up.”
Wherever, in this case, is not meaningless. It means a specific range of coordinates.
I express a mutual sentiment, aware that many others have vowed this before. #953256304582635402390839472-69476029864324538763406578530692876-862-629867534857634876553875623984762342364876238676260000624626230462346200000032426346328756438765235782364 and I stick together.
A jolt of desire takes us into the presence of Perfection. A subliminary byproduct of Perfection greets us with a bath of warmth. Forever they express: “Ready?”
The smell of rotting meat is introduced to us. #953256304582635402390839472-69476029864324538763406578530692876-862-629867534857634876553875623984762342364876238676260000624626230462346200000032426346328756438765235782364 and I respond with nausea. Correct: a positive is expressed.
Now a burst of animal terror lunges at us. It creates fear no academic grasp could prepare you for. In the eternity it leaves, a negative is expressed.
“You forgot to breathe.” the envoy informs #953256304582635402390839472-69476029864324538763406578530692876-862-629867534857634876553875623984762342364876238676260000624626230462346200000032426346328756438765235782364. My friend inflates imaginary lungs desperately, but their portal is already closed.
They transmit courage to me for the advanced round. ‘Human’ is notoriously hard.
(But you did it. You sly genius, you.)
I am forced to regard myself. I respond with hatred and fear. To return to this state of absence is a poisonous thought – I am disgusted by death.
A positive sounds; my disgust is enough. I am jettisoned from non-life. But I remember those eternal moments even as I begin to breathe, witness, and cough.
At last I am born.