He was told that he came from her waters.
Carried for months.
Nine being the number.
Nobody knew his name when he arrived, so they gave him one.
They whispered it over him.
Called it across rooms.
Wrote it on pieces of paper.
Repeated it again and again until eventually he turned his head when he heard it.
And from then on, he owned it.
Or perhaps it owned him.
Everything had to be taught.
How to eat.
How to drink.
How to shit the right way.
How to cover himself.
How to speak.
What was beautiful and what was ugly.
What was good and what was bad.
What belonged to him and what belonged to somebody else.
What was possible.
What was impossible.
Programs installed.
One after another.
Until the nameless creature that had come from her waters became a person.
But the greatest program was yet to come.
It arrived quietly at first.
Then violently.
His body began changing.
Desires appeared which nobody had asked his permission to install.
He found himself looking at another human being differently.
Something ancient had awakened inside him.
They called it puberty.
They explained what was happening.
Hormones.
Sex.
Reproduction.
All perfectly normal.
And when he was of age, he did what countless others had done before him.
He didn’t really know why his body wanted it.
Why his mind became obsessed by it.
Why the presence of another could suddenly make his heart race and his thoughts scatter.
But he obeyed.
Most did.
It was a ceremony, you see.
An initiation into the ritual of life.
For a while it gave him the feeling of sameness.
Belonging.
He was doing what human beings did.
Perhaps one day he would create another like himself.
Another creature would emerge from her waters.
Nameless.
And the programming would begin again.
Yet something remained inside him.
An emptiness.
It had always been there.
He remembered it from childhood, although he could never quite explain what he remembered.
Sometimes he would wake in the night and feel it.
Sometimes he would see the moon through his bedroom window and feel it.
Sometimes it appeared in the silence between two thoughts.
Something missing.
Or perhaps something waiting.
Questions began to form.
Where did I come from?
Not the waters.
Before that.
Where am I going?
Not tomorrow.
Not next year.
After all the tomorrows had finished.
The adults had answers.
Religion was given to him.
Here was God.
Here was creation.
Here were the rules.
Here was the beginning.
Here was the end.
He listened carefully.
Then they told him something disturbing.
He was a sinner.
There was something wrong with him.
He needed saving.
Saving?
From what?
And from whom?
He asked.
The answers only created more questions.
So he looked elsewhere.
He read philosophers.
He listened to clever men.
He listened to foolish men who sounded clever.
He studied science.
He fell in love.
He fell out of love.
He worked.
He earned money.
He bought things.
He lost things.
He accumulated opinions.
Politics.
Preferences.
Enemies.
Memories.
Regrets.
Achievements.
Passwords.
Numbers.
He became extremely knowledgeable about the person whose name had been given to him all those years ago.
He could tell you where that person had been born.
What schools he attended.
What frightened him.
What pleased him.
Who had betrayed him.
What he believed.
What he didn’t believe.
What he wanted from tomorrow.
The strange thing was that the more he knew about himself, the greater the emptiness became.
So he searched harder.
There must be an answer somewhere.
A book.
A teacher.
A lover.
A god.
Somebody must know.
Nobody did.
Years passed.
His face changed.
His body slowed.
People who had once seemed impossibly old became younger than him.
Then one night he awoke in darkness.
There was no particular reason.
No dream that he could remember.
No noise outside.
He opened his eyes.
And for perhaps three seconds—
he couldn’t remember his name.
He couldn’t remember where he was.
He couldn’t remember his age.
He couldn’t remember what he believed.
He couldn’t remember whether he had succeeded or failed.
He couldn’t remember whether he was good.
He couldn’t remember whether he was bad.
He couldn’t remember whether he was a sinner.
He couldn’t remember whether he needed saving.
There was only awareness.
Silent.
Nameless.
Watching from somewhere that wasn’t anywhere.
And the emptiness was there.
Except now it didn’t feel empty.
It felt enormous.
For those three seconds he wanted nothing.
Feared nothing.
Knew nothing.
And somehow—
recognized everything.
Then his name returned.
His room returned.
His history returned.
The machinery started.
He sat upright.
Something extraordinary had happened.
Not because he’d remembered something.
Because, for three seconds, he’d forgotten.
He got out of bed and walked to the window.
Outside, the sleeping world continued its rituals.
Cars moved along distant roads.
Lights burned behind curtains.
Millions of people slept beneath names given to them by other people.
Tomorrow they would wake and remember who they were.
He suddenly wondered if they had it backwards.
Perhaps the great mystery wasn’t that human beings had forgotten where they came from.
Perhaps forgetting came later.
First came the waters.
Then the name.
Then the words.
Then the rules.
Then desire.
Then fear.
Then belief.
Then the great accumulation called me.
He stood at the window for a long time.
And somewhere, impossibly distant and impossibly close, he thought he could hear water.
He finally understood the question that had followed him all his life.
Who was I before they told me who I was?
He closed his eyes.
His name was still there.
His memories were still there.
The world was still there.
But now he knew they could disappear.
And beneath them was something that had never needed a name.
The man who had spent his whole life trying to remember finally understood.
He hadn’t forgotten who he was.
He had remembered who they told him he was.
And perhaps one day, when every name had fallen silent, he would return to her waters.
Nameless again.
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