Boaz held a scuffed baseball at eye level, twisted it back and forth, inspecting the stitching through his dark sunglasses.
“This world, and many others like it, they started with a word, and the word was…chaos.” He lowered the ball, then stared off at nothing. “Actually, what started it all was something else entirely. Chaos is what came after.”
The young boy standing in front of Boaz pushed up on his hat and squinted. “Hey, mister? Can I—”
“The origin event. Everything was close together, then it wasn’t. The big bang. A hot, dense state. Sounds like some people I know if I’m being honest.”
The boy looked behind him. “Okay.”
“Expanding. Eons later, everything is still expanding. Again, sounds like some people I know…”
“I just want my—”
“Worlds blossomed. Life flourished…”
“—ball.”
“Only to eventually end,”
“It’s just—”
“but like a bad weed, life comes back, in one form or another.”
“—we can’t play without it.”
Boaz glanced from the ball to the boy, and back again. “Like humans, with your highly aggressive and expansionist tendencies. You destroy so much in the name of progress, not understanding that one day your time will come. And then what?”
The boy frowned, held his hand out, pleading filled his half open eyes.
“Chaos. That’s what.” Boaz dropped the ball into the boy’s waiting palm. “For a while, anyhow.
The boy turned and set off to join his waiting friends. “Whatever you say, mister.”
Boaz slid his sunglasses down his nose. Dark eyes, full of stars and worlds long dead, traced after the boy. “And then one day, perhaps, tools will be built, languages will form, and the cycle will begin anew.” He smiled. “Won’t it be fun to see how that turns out?”
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Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash
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