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http://aloysiusrexford.newgrounds.com/
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Continued:

The phone still rang out when you slammed it down. You tried your hardest to cancel the sound out. The man stared at you. He had the utmost patience in his stature as if he could wait forever. This reinforced your ideas that time didn't exist here. You thought that if time didn't exist here it surely must exist outside of here. This simple thought almost threw you into a state of panic. Outside of this place there surely must have been a cause for alarm. Then again, perhaps not. You didn't have much of a family to look after. You knew the few friends you had would surely be alright for a while. After so many missed calls they would surely check into things. At last, if a long amount of time outside of this place was passing, your landlord would surely look into your disappearance. You hoped this. Then again, what good would it really do? You, yourself had no idea how you got here. They surely would not. This upset you. You didn't show it but, it did. You tried not to feel alarmed. You tried to welcome this vacation of sorts. Unaware of how long you had been thinking you looked up from what you speculated could only be ground. You couldn't find your shadow in this place, it was hard to assess what you were even standing on, if you were standing on anything. You had the feeling of standing and that was all. You picked up the telephone and it made a hollow clunking sound when lifted from its handles.

With the phone pressed hard against the auricle of your ear you closed your eyes. You wished for a sort of 'higher knowledge' to grace your brain. You knew it wouldn't come. However, you thought that anything in this place just might be possible. 'Time' passed and you had nothing. Harder yet, you pressed the phone into your ear. It hurt. You wanted to be sucked inside the little holes that allowed sound to pass through. You wanted to be a sound wave and pass through to his phone and tell him the right answer. You licked your lips carefully and began,

"May i ask you a question before i answer?" you spoke out in a hopeful tone.

He blinked once and raised his head a bit in his upper class air.

"I will allow that. Continue. What is your question?" He wasted no air (assuming there was air here).

"How am i supposed to fill you with knowledge when i don't know what you know and how many tries do i get?"

He didn't quite answer right away, but nonetheless he answered rather quickly. His speed was more so masked at the interval at which his first couple of words where ran together, yet pronounced clearly.

"You pose a good point. Since i cannot transfer all my knowledge to you it is seemingly unfair. Things are not fair sometimes. You know that i have a fairly vast knowledge. I explained: it is nothing great, but i know things about a few subjects. To put it all rather vaguely. I will tell you this, though. You will have a few tries. If you tire me out then you will not win. I will let you know when I have had enough." He blinked once, his lids releasing slightly at different times, much like reptile. You couldn't see that though.

You almost stuttered a quick response back, but withheld your voice. A number of expletives formed in your head.

"Can we talk more before i tell you?" you asked.

He looked at you, almost cautiously, but you could be quite certain.

"Hm." he paused, "Yes."

You let out a breath of air.

"Where am I? What is this?" you asked in a fevered manner.

"This is everything and nothing." he responded quickly and vaguely.

A furrow scurried across your brow "OK. Then, does this place change?"

"Why, yes. Changes here can be subtle or brash. Really, its up to you."

"Can I make it change? I think it might help me if it was something different."

"What would you like to see?"

"Sky? Maybe some sun."

For a second you thought you saw him cringe with distaste. You weren't sure though. A twitch again? He was so still. You couldn't be sure. A silence continued as he seemingly thought about what he should do. Finally, after sorting it out, he agreed.

"Yes, as long as it helps you answer. I am in this as much as you are, you see. If you think of something too concrete this will not work. Try not to think of were you previously came from necessarily. It will not work otherwise and when you open your eyes you will still be standing here as we are. Focus on the simple details of what you want to see. You said 'sky'. You also said..." and a slight sneer pulled at his nostril as if the very word caused a pungent bacterial rot bellow his nose, "sun". He gave himself a nod as if to place the final period on his sentence. It was as if it was all very hard to say. "Whenever you are ready close your eyes tightly and think about your..." and he cleared his throat a bit "...sky".

Before he ended his sentence you had your eyes tightly shut. Shut so hard that the dark static produced from your tightly pulled muscles slowly formed a brilliant blue space. Etched here in this blue canvas were giant bubbling clouds. Their edges in sharp contrast with their background. They hung on the sky like fresh white linens. Below you a two inch mirror of water formed around your ankles and stretched as far as the horizon. When all color came to, you weren't sure if you had opened your eyes or if you still had them clasped closed. This was disorientating for a moment. it was like little theatrical puppet show of your dream. You would wake up but, only to find that you were still dreaming. You would wake up again, only to find yourself dreaming again. You're dreaming about dreaming about dreaming. This whole episode being played out in a mirror box and reflecting infinitely in compass directions.

You blinked your eyes once over. It felt real. You still couldn't manage to prove that to yourself though. With your eyes closed, you seemingly created the most tangible place of all. So real, that even upon opening them you weren't sure if they were really open. Like you submitted your mind elsewhere.

You went with it.

You didn't notice before - but now - the man from before was sitting in front of you in a white leather chair. It looked new. He was dressed in a full black tuxedo and a top hat for his crown. He had on his shoulder a small monkey holding a white umbrella that blended into the scenery behind. You thought to snicker at his tenacious luxury but, held it in. A stark shadow crossed his face from his hat and the position of the sun filtering through that umbrella. From behind his thick shadow he spoke to you, and you saw one corner of his mouth writhing around.

"Is this better?" He said into the telephone from before. They had not moved. The only change was that you could see one long system of telephone poles stretching for miles until your eyes couldn't grab. these poles were incidentally enough hooked up to the two white rotary phones. You had no idea if that's how it worked. You didn't really bother with logical, working, physical objects anymore.

You nodded but, you didn't really affirm 'thanks' in your mind. It was just something you expected should happen.

"Yeah. I guess." you said almost nonchalantly while peering out at nothing in the symmetrical horizon. As much as you wished it were real. This place. You kept repeating through your mind the various inconsistencies. You could hardly feel any weather here. You couldn't feel the intensity of the sun or the cool feeling of the water. It felt off. It was like everything was wrapped up in a cotton ball. It was this all muffled. It was sort of like the feeling you got when you watched film. You would repeat over and over: This is all supposed and fake. You never really suspended your belief and soon you could see through most acting. Or rather, you didn't trust it. Real or acted.

Finally, you spoke,"You said it would be fatal if i didn't answer to your unknown standards. How?"

With no wasted effort his lips parted slowly, "Perhaps a friend? Or Relative? Maybe even yourself?"

You heaved out air like some tempered fourteen year old with nothing better to reply with. Time lapsed and the clouds still didn't seem to even thinking about moving across the sky.
"Really? What if i told you that I honestly could care less? As far as I'm concerned I could be dead right now. None of this makes any sense y'know. Why should i care to appeal to your search for some random knowledge? I really don't care what happens. If i answer wrong. Or if i answer right. In the end, what does it even matter? Why should you care about any of this? Why is this happening to me?"

The man seemed to have cleared some hair from his forehead. Maybe sweat? No, you doubted that. You watched him adjust his hat like it'd be the last time he'd be wearing it. Slow, subtle movements as if the sun was setting muscle atrophy in motion.
"Hm. That was quite the sequence of questions. Almost morbid. You speak objectively, yes? I would hope you do not actually mean those things. I can assure you that you are not 'dead right now'. This is no sort of purgatory, heaven, or hell. It all makes perfect sense. I am here in your infrastructure. I never told you that you had to appeal to anything. The choices is up to you. However, you and myself are far more linked then you might imagine. 'In the end, what does it even matter'? You pose a familiar question, there." He raised his voice now, as if miming my words out exaggeratedly in segments, to the clouds, "In the end! What!? Does it even matter...It is hard to say. I don't think any one person really knows. Yet, inside themselves they hold onto their own simple philosophy. Do you want to 'make the world a better place'? Live for humanity? Be blessed with all the riches you can imagine? Find a God? See the world? Fix the atrocities of this world? Follow your passion even if it rewards little but your simplistic happiness." He stopped a moment as if to let me take in what he said or, maybe he was waiting for my interjection.

You decided to speak.
"Yeah, the world is your oyster m'boy! But, what is outside of the oyster, hm?" You spoke with a theatrical flair.

He thought about that for a while, most likely with a raised brow, then started, "We always want more. Like a dog chasing a car. What would we do or think if we got to the theoretical 'end'?" and he stopped for an answer, if you had one.

"I don't know what would happen if we got to 'the end'. Everything else around us has 'ends'. Books, movies, games, life and death. You ever try and wonder about the life the people portrayed in a movie would lead after the movie rolls its credits - back to normality? Especially in one of those flicks that 'leave you hanging' at the end' - then again, those movies are probably more like life. You mocked the people behind the movie, "Ah, maybe we'll come back to it, but'ah, no big deal, really. Let'em use their imagination!" You saw the man in the black top hat reach for words, but you came back with more.
"You know, i hate it when you say 'i just want something normal' and then the other person goes 'yeah, well, what is normal?' Is normal what we've seen through various media? Is that what we all strive for? Pre-conceived notions on life? You think creativity has an end? Do you think everything ends at some point?" You spoke sporadically, as if hit with some process of divine thought. You weren't quite sure what you meant at some point. You had a meaning, but you felt like you jumbled it up far too much to really decipher.

The pistol is shot. The runners jolt up. Their minds are set on milliseconds - on an end. Towards a triumph, a victory. The billions of physical responses from all the tiny cells in their bodies working in unison. Each and every human being is a giant infrastructure for the working eukaryotes to move a whole object. Like the plates of earth we all smash into each other causing various results.

"That's going to be my first try." you said the last few words carefully, still collecting your thoughts. "Everything has to end sometime, right?" The more you repeated it to the man in the top hat the more you wanted to withdraw it. you added the saying of, "matter can neither be destroyed or created. If that was the case", and you thought, then said, "maybe there isn't a phenomenal end. Perhaps the things that don't really matter - end. Like the little 'God parts' written inside of us we create little worlds with creativity. In a piece of music. In a film. A book. As the bible suggests 'we were created in his image' or however the line goes, i don't know it exactly, I'm not into all that, really. We create. We end. We control. Even the bible has plenty of interpretations by other people, rewrites of sorts. A 'translation'. Perhaps our world is a reflection of what we all really want? A definitive end? I mean, even if we were to find out that everything is infinite, that is an end, yes? The Bible ends. The Sun ends. The earth will end, eventually. Do we want to talk to ourselves? Take a book for example. Its one author writing out parts for everyone. Essentially, a conversation with himself? Everything perfectly executed even if its in an imperfect situation. How quaint it all happens with such passion and meaning. In our heads we want that 'perfect girl', right? Isn't that generally a basis on who we are as people? Its all rather selfish isn't it?" By now you weren't even sure what you said or if it had any valid importance. You just carried on. You just realized why.

You packed your questions tightly together and they melted like some canned fish. For some reason everything suddenly felt insignificant. Your bones too, felt like mush as you stood there in the sky. You felt like the final thoughts a whale had before it dried up on some sand somewhere.

[ Stop. I'll add more again. Perhaps. I don't know how i feel about this segment, i'll probably add changes to it - mainly to what the character says at the end. . I don't know how i feel about my writing in general. This is pretty unedited. Its a flow. The picture is Salar De Uyuni, Bolivia, the most beautiful place i have ever seen, wet or dry - in pixels.]