Letter 5, Bridge of Eventuality

There once lived a people named "Choice". They lived in a valley that stretched further than knowledge would allow to understand, mainly because people lost their wits trying to explore its ends.

These people had one thing in common (other than being alive); they were born with a rock in hand: a small pebble shaped like a cube that was one inch in size, on all sides. No one knew why they were born with a cube, and the Choice never questioned its strangeness because it was the only thing they knew.

The people named Choice also had something else that made them particular: they did not have to eat or drink to live. They simply lived for an amount of time similar to you and I, but without the need to live off the land. They simply lived on it – But they did face an issue.

The "Inevitable."

The Inevitable is similar to our concept of death, but at the same time it holds an essence of life: change is the ending of the past and the start of the present. In the case of the people of Choice, the "Inevitable" represented their parting with their pebble; for you see, when a person of Choice lets go of their pebble, they can never pick it back up. But the other part to the Inevitable is that if they do not let go of their pebble for many years, the pebble will crumble into dust, along with the life of the owner, without fail.

So the people of Choice lived their lives with this knowledge: they are born and live with a pebble in a land without end, and they will eventually face the Inevitable.

But, one day, something unexpected occurred: an earthquake (as we call it) had split the ground upon which the people of Choice stood, forming a large crevice. The Choice decided to explore its length, since the width from one side to the other was too large to jump across, and the depth seemed as deep as the land was infinite. But after many years of exploration, some of the Choices began to think that there was no point in continuing to seek the end of the crevice. So they stopped walking and let the other Choices continue their search.

Eventually, the Choices that stayed behind began to lose interest in crossing the crevice. They created a philosophy called "Complacence," and, as the name suggested, they went nowhere. But as time passed, the Inevitable happened and Choices began to wither - along with their pebbles - until very few of the older generations that had first decided to stay put began to die, along with their philosophy of "Complacence."

The new generation of Choices became the majority, and with a large change in population came a large change in ideology; the new philosophy was called "Eventuality." The ideal of "Eventuality" came from trying to figure out how to build a platform across the crevice in order to get to the other side. The Choices would finally decide to use the only material they had (their pebbles) - even if it meant the death of the life of a Choice - as the foundation for the platform.

They left the possibility of getting to the other side to the future Choices.

So thousands and thousands of the Choices began to throw their pebbles into the crevice and, with it, their life. At first the pebbles only fell into the darkness, with the swish of the wind gliding past them as the only sound they made. But as the thousands of Choices continued to be sacrificed towards the goal of "Eventuality," a different sound began to be heard - the sound of rocks hitting another - which further inspired the future generations that had now taken up the responsibility. Generations continued to be born and continued to die with younger generations taking up the mantel of the previous Choices, but with much greater fervor, since now the sounds of pebbles hitting each other became visible; the platform was almost complete.

But with the rise in dedication to the goal of "Eventuality" came the fall in the number of Choices. The higher the platform rose, the lower the population fell, since, by this point, the Choices had become so rash with desire to complete the task of building the platform that they stopped focusing on rebuilding the population equally as fast as they were finishing it. This trend continued until the platform and "Eventuality" was achieved. But with it came a new realization.

Only one Choice remained.

This one being had experienced the result of Eventuality (not that it was going to lead to the satisfaction the founders had imagined, but that "Eventuality" was actually a disguise of "Inevitability").

The single Choice was crushed by this realization, but in honor of the previous Choices, they began to cross the bridge. As the Choice came to the final step before reaching the end of the crevice, they saw something: a small space that was one inch in length - on all sides - right between the platform and the other side of the crevice. But something else appeared: a sound, a bunch of sounds, the sounds of other Choices appearing in the distance. The Choice, standing on the platform, looked to the direction in which the older generations that had not stayed behind had migrated, and were now returning, on the side of the crevice that so many Choices had been sacrificed to get to.

The Choice simply stood there and looked in complete silence and watched as the migrating Choices approached until they stood right across from each other and looked into one other's eyes.

After some silence, they began to speak and tell of each other's history, now that generations have passed. And after the conversation was over, the Choice from Eventuality got down on their knees when they had filtered the information from the long talk.

It turned out that while the Choices of Eventuality (that were once the Choices of "Complacence") had gone through many generations of Choices trying to build the platform, the Choices of "Possibility" had only gone through two generations since the start of their journey. Because of the desire to reach the other side of the crevice using their pebbles, the Choices of "Eventuality" had gone through multiple generations at a much faster pace than normal – thousands were gone within a couple of years.

With the "Eventuality" came the "Inevitable," so the final Choice from the philosophy of "Eventuality" that remained looked down and placed their pebble into the final empty space of the platform, and as they let go of their pebble they looked up and smiled kindly at the other Choices, finishing the Bridge of Eventuality.

By: Rafael Migoyo (Ravimi)

Edited by Eric Staab and Mercedes Flowers