The following was first published in Wet Ink, issue 8, vol 1, spring 2007.
In the beginning, The Word was a joke. It was a hoax, a prank. An idea I had for turning the writing world on its head. I never believed it would actually work. At least not the way it did.
You see, my idea was this: to write a book in which there is only one word. Literally. One. Not a word repeated. Just one.
My colleagues, they said it couldn’t be done and they asked me which word it would be.
I said it would be the Word. The one God said to make the universe.
Which is? they said back.
Ah, I said. You’ll just have to buy it to see.
My students would quiz me:
How can you publish a book with just one word?
Who would read it?
Who would buy it?
And: How will you know it’s the word?
And I would smile at their mixture of ignorance and arrogance, secure (then) in my own bubble of self righteousness. For although I knew their questions had merit – and that once The Word was published I would be hearing the same questions in the media storm that would follow – I was not worried. I knew I’d find the Word.
And I didn’t just make it up, either. I researched.
I read the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, the Dead Sea Scrolls. But I knew I wouldn’t find it there – I knew that the Word of God would be found not just in the scripture of religion, but in everything. I mean, He is supposed to be everywhere, isn’t He?
So I studied chaos mathematics, physics, astronomy and astrology, for I thought the skies would be a good place to look. Geometry (though I loathed it), biology, genetics, all the sciences I could lay my hands on; quantum physics, of course. I learned Latin, though all it gave me was a headache.
And through it all I felt I was getting close, closer than anyone had ever been; and yet the answer was still to be found. The Word was still unwritten.
I didn’t give up, at least not then. I spent months reading the works of Shelley, Byron, Keats, for if anyone would be most likely to articulate the Word of God – subconsciously or not – it would be the Romantic poets. But, alas, t’was not to be. All I ended up getting was paper cuts.
I read and I read and I read, and I listened to the grey beards, the scholars of Harvard, Oxford, Yale. I went to seminars, festivals, focus groups, rallies. I spent time in temples, seminaries, communes. I wrote to ex-Presidents, movie stars, gurus.
But nothing. No Word.
This was ten years now. A decade spent chasing the ghostly trace of a word that had never been written down, had been spoken only once before, in a time before time had even been thought of. It was, I was starting to think, impossible.
My work suffered, my life stalled. Friends stopped calling me for fear of the way I would react when they asked about the book. My colleagues avoided me, the invitations to drinks ceased. I couldn’t write. I took too many drugs, ate too little. I didn’t shave, didn’t wash, didn’t do anything. I was at rock bottom.
And then it hit me. Eureka, as they say.
I was sleeping, although it wasn’t a deep sleep, and my dreams were lucid, almost tangible. In the dream, I can remember light, and a voice so deep that I could discern no words. It was soothing, at least at first, and it gave me a vague, primal feeling – almost as if I were remembering what it was like to be soothed by my mother when I was a babe.
But soon the voice grew harsher, the words (which I could still not comprehend) more clipped; shorter, sharper. I could feel my mind pushing for consciousness, as if instinctually it knew it must flee to save itself from this attention. But I resisted the urge, I held on, even as the droning of the voice washed over me, sickening waves of words pummelling me, beating at me, eroding me.
I clenched my teeth and felt hot blood fill my mouth as I bit off the tip of my tongue, and still I did not wake, still I stayed with it, still I kept the light in my eyes and the words in my mind. I was surprised I could do it; as I’ve said, I had let myself go, and I thought I had little strength left. But I surprised even myself.
Finally, with an ear splitting shriek that left me sweating in the corner and raving like a madman, the voice finished its fearsome tirade with one word.
The Word.
It was only later, thinking back, that I realised why the voice spoke to me in such a way. But by then it was too late.
I went to the publisher the next day, Linus Press. I had met their editor Anna Heathcliffe the previous summer at a festival, and she had seemed, at the time, mildly interested in the notion. Thankfully, even a year later, she was still receptive to the idea of the book and, upon learning that I had indeed found the Word, agreed to giving the book a run as she put it. Linus did an initial print run in the low thousands, threw an intern at the marketing, and sent me a $2000 advance.
Again, luck was on my side, for the intern – a thin, sallow girl unimaginably named Emma Brown – happened to be one of those determined graduates who think doing overtime results in career advancement, and before I knew it I was lined up for interviews with a number of major newspapers, news services and television shows. The Word had yet to be released but the hype machine, once started, was running its inevitable course.
The interviews were tough, I have to admit that. I had expected puzzlement, curiosity, possibly even burgeoning admiration – what I got was derision, ridicule and outright anger. I didn’t care. I knew that what I had was unique, special, a book that every person on the planet would want to read, to buy. Even when the religious factions went on television to denounce me, I knew that it could only help The Word. Controversy sells, after all.
And finally it was D Day. The launch day of The Word.
Because of the hype, Linus had sold the rights of the book five minutes after the first interview, with the publishing going to Mandela International. Mandela did what they do best – they put their multinational weight behind the novel and started spreading (if you’ll pardon the pun) the word.
They printed 1 billion copies and placed them in bookstores across the globe.
The Word was released to the world on April 1st, 2020. April Fool’s Day, coincidentally or not.
And, in a highly publicised promotional coup, Mandela arranged for every bookstore stocking the book to open its doors simultaneously, no matter the time zone. Some people laughed at that, saying Who would go to a bookstore in Moscow at 3am? or Is there a bookshop in the Artic Circle, and if so what time does it open? I called them fools, but if Mandela had only listened to the truth behind the humour, it may have saved us. All of us.
Well, all of you, really.
On April 1st, 2020, at 9 a.m. New York time, 1 billion people bought The Word.
And read it.
And on April 1st, 2020, at 9.01, the world ceased to exist.
Well, not just the world.
The whole universe.
Everything.
Except me.
I remember it distinctly. The bookstore I was standing in, the street outside, the city, the country, the continent, the land, the oceans, the sky, the moon, the stars, the sun, the planets, the galaxies, the space, the universe, the light, the dark – all gone in the blink of an eye. Like that.
You see, the cumulative effect of a billion people reading and saying and thinking and comprehending the Word of God – the word that gave life to everything – undid the whole thing. It countered the spell. It reversed it, inversed it. Took it back to zero. It fucked it all up.
It was then that I realised why the voice in my dream, the one that had given me the Word, had had such a tone. It had been a warning; yet one I had not heard, nor heeded, in pride. It was all my fault.
The Word had been the most successful book in the history of the world. And after everyone had read it, the world had ended.
Is that ironic? I’m not sure anymore…
But there’s no need to despair. Not for that old world, in any case, that old everything. You see, the Word may have undone reality, but it didn’t undo me. After all, I wrote The Word…and that sort of makes me God now.
So I’m writing a new book, a new world. A new everything.
And to begin, I just have to find the right word.
- Luke Keioskie
