Felix sat against a tree in a small field about a mile into the woods behind his
family’s house. He had somewhat recently developed a fondness for spending time secluded in nature,
and he loved studying and collecting plants and minerals and whatever else he could find,
often creating journals with drawings and diagrams to identify and log his findings. He came to this
specific tree quite often, whenever he wanted to clear his head or make a big decision. It
was isolated, away from everyone and everything. Felix had just turned eighteen and was going off
to university in the coming fall. He still had not yet fully decided what he wanted to study,
though, and it was eating away at him. He knew he didn’t have to decide right then
and then stick to it for the rest of his life, but he was the type of person who,
once he chose something, he was pretty much all in on it. And he knew that about himself.
Felix sat there against the tree and thought to himself—about his future, who he wanted be,
and how he wanted to live his life. Part of him wanted to pursue something like botany, and live
a simple life, but another part of him wanted something much greater—to be truly successful,
renowned by the world and by history; he wanted to be someone who was known and remembered.
Before he knew it, the day grew old, and Felix grew tired. He looked up at the sky as
the light blue became a gradient of colors, soon to be darkness. He looked around him,
at the spring leaves rustling on the trees and the budding flowers trembling in the
wind. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When Felix opened his eyes, he saw a woman. She
was standing at a tree opposite him, maybe fifty yards away. Her face was angled slightly and
pressed up against the tree with one of her hands kind of cupped around her eye. She appeared to be
looking into it. She was dressed in all white and had a strange lightness about her. She was old but
not elderly. Her face was tight but pretty. Felix had never seen anyone around this area before,
so he was immediately startled and confused. He quickly got up and began quickly walking home.
“Hey!” yelled the woman. Felix paused and hesitantly turned
around toward her. The woman was somehow right up near him now, maybe two arm’s lengths away.
“Hi,” Felix said apprehensively. “You don’t have to leave just because of me,” said
the woman, “I just like coming out here to think.” That’s a strange coincidence,
Felix thought to himself. “No, it’s fine. I was just heading home.”
“Ok, suit yourself.” Felix turned around and kept walking.
“What were you thinking about?” the woman continued unprompted.
Felix turned around again. “Why?”
“You seem stressed. Maybe I can help. I’ve been around a while.”
“Uhm…you know, school. Life in general, I guess.”
“Hmm,” said the woman, “What about it?” “I guess, I’m trying to decide what I want
to do, what I want to go to school for and do in life and everything.”
“Well, what do you want?” asked the woman. “I want to be successful. I know that. And
I want to be important. I want the world to know me and remember me.”
“Hmm,” said the woman. She stood quietly for a moment.
“Look over here for a minute. I want to show you something.”
The woman walked over to the tree Felix was sitting at. Felix followed somewhat hesitantly.
When they arrived, the woman pointed at the tree, staring at it intensely. Felix was confused as he
looked on at the tree, then the woman, then back at the tree. Suddenly, the woman approached the
tree and placed her finger into the face of it. It went right through. The ground shook with a brief
but violent jolt. Felix found the whole thing kind of disturbing. The woman walked back away from the
tree, looked at Felix, and then pointed at what was now a small hole, about the size of a coin.
“What’s that?” Felix asked. “Look,” said the woman.
Felix approached the tree hesitantly and looked inside. As he approached, the view inside the
hole grew larger and larger, almost distorting the tree and creating a growing fisheye perspective,
like a peephole on a door. On the inside, he saw himself and the woman. As if from another
person’s perspective behind them, he saw himself from third person, looking into the tree with
the woman standing behind him. “What is that?” Felix asked,
disconcertingly moving away. “Follow me,” said the woman.
The woman began walking into the woods. Compelled by curiosity and
an inexplicable comfort, Felix followed her. While they were walking, Felix blurted out,
“Can you go into that?” “Into what?”
“The little hole thing?” “No.”
“Why not?” “You’ll die.”
When the two reached another seemingly arbitrary tree, the woman stopped. She approached it and
poked three holes in a horizontal line, and then stepped back. Felix followed her lead
and looked inside the first hole. He saw a man who looked to be in his twenties or thirties.
He looked familiar, but Felix couldn’t quite pin down exactly where he had seen him from before.
The man was sitting at a desk, alone, working. It appeared to be a large office with big windows.
It was nighttime and you could see the skyline of a city behind him. The man appeared to be deeply
stressed. Felix backed away from the hole. “Who is that?” he asked.
“You.” Felix looked in again and recognized himself now.
“You are one of the few people capable of immense greatness,” the woman said in much more intense,
focused tone. “Your traits and abilities will mix just right to allow you to climb the ranks
of the business world, and you will become one of the most prominent business magnates
and product developers in human history. You will be revered by the world in your lifetime.
You will be remembered for a long time after it.” The woman pointed at the second hole. Felix looked
inside and saw an older man in his forties or fifties. He was on a large stage, receiving what
looked like some sort of an award. He was wearing a strange tuxedo unlike anything Felix had ever
seen before. A massive crowd was applauding him. A woman and two children stood at the front of
it. The man smiled and pointed at them. Then, he smiled and pointed at the rest of the crowd.
A moment passed and the man got off the stage and went up to the woman and two children in
the front. They appeared to be his family. He whispered in the woman’s ear, his lips reading,
“I have to catch that flight now.” The woman looked disappointed as the man left
with what looked like a small team of security. “Is that…that’s me too?” Felix asked the woman
as he pulled his face away. “Yes, a little bit older.”
Without being instructed, Felix looked into the third hole. It was a classroom filled with
students. The classroom looked strange, mostly empty, with sleek white walls and
floors. The students were using some sort of device that displayed out in front of them,
like a holographic textbook. On their displays, were text and an image of Felix in his fifties.
“Is that—” “Well after your lifetime,” interrupted the woman.
Felix began to feel an indescribable sense of pride, relief, and excitement
for himself and his future. He smiled tightly and his shoulders raised.
“You will be this,” said the woman, “but you will dedicate your entire life to your career,
to your businesses, to your legacy.” “Ok,” Felix said, figuring as much.
“No, you don’t understand,” the woman continued, “You will sacrifice everything: your free time,
most of your social life, most of you love life and family life, almost all of your leisure,
and peace, and quiet. Just about everything else with fall to the wayside. But it is
guaranteed you will be this; known by the world and remembered by history.”
“What about like more of a balance?” Felix interrupted.
“There is no balance when one side of the scale requires everything from you.”
Felix paused. “So, is this it?” Felix said as he gestured
out and around him, hoping that perhaps the woman was an indication of something beyond this life.
“Follow me,” said the woman, continuing to walk a little further into woods and up a hillside.
The woman stopped at a large boulder. Felix was exhausted. The night was taking over the sky.
Again, the woman created a hole, this time in the face of the rock. She stepped away and pointed
toward it. Felix approached and looked in. Inside, Felix saw nothing.
The only dimension of space he could make out was from faint light beams that seemed to be coming
from what looked like stars in the distance. “What is that?” Felix asked as
he pulled his head away. “That’s here, a short time
into the future, relatively speaking.” The woman pointed down at the ground.
“But there’s nothing,” Felix said. “I know.”
“Where is everything?” “Where everything goes.”
“But what happened to Earth?” “What didn’t happen to Earth?”
The woman poked another hole in the boulder right above the previous one.
Felix knew what to do. Inside this one, he saw everything. In a violent rupture of perspective,
he was pulled from his myopic view and thrust outward into an indescribable,
unrestrained view of everything, free from time, free from space. He saw the waltz of waves and
the poetry of particles; the discothèque of dimension and the emancipation of energy;
the dance of decay and the pain of progress. He saw nothing and everything intertwined
like a serpent consuming its tail with reason and absurdity excreting out from it. Finally,
Felix saw himself amidst it all: an infinitesimal blemish on a spec that if it didn’t exist,
nothing would be different at all. His tininess was as inconceivable as the universe’s vastness.
Felix pushed himself away, holding his upper stomach and breathing heavily.
The woman waited a minute. “Come on. Let’s go back now.”
The two arrived back at the tree where they had started. The hole in the tree was gone now,
but the woman made two final new ones. Felix, exhausted now, unable to imagine what else she
could possibly be showing him, slowly and reluctantly approached and looked inside.
He saw himself again in his thirties or forties. But this time, he was walking
in the woods with two other people around the same age. They were wearing relatively casual,
outdoorsy clothing. They carried large futuristic test tubes and what looked like
digital magnifying glasses. They seemed happy. Felix looked into the second hole. It was him
again, still around the same age—a little older maybe. He was playing with children
in the front yard of a house in what looked like the countryside. A woman sat in the background
on the porch of the small home. A moment passed and then a car drove up and another
family got out and joined them. Felix pulled his head away.
“Is that…is that also me?” “It is.”
“I’m confused. I thought you said I was going to be…what about my destiny?”
“Every destiny is made of decisions, every decision is made with a goal in mind. Your destiny
is only what you do. You can choose not to.” Felix paused, trying to wrap his head around
everything. The weight and absurdity of the whole experience knocked him to the ground.
“When you see everything, you realize how much is really nothing. And when you see nothing,
you realize what is really everything. You said you wanted to be successful. I can see
everything, anytime, anyplace, and I do not know what this means. Only you do.”
Felix leaned up against the tree and laid back for a moment.
He looked up at the night sky, breathed in deeply, and closed his eyes.
“So,” said the woman, “what are you going to do?”