The Man who Knew Everything

 The Man Who Knew Everything

Once there lived a man who boasted he could know everything

and the two brother gods, Remembrance and Forgetfulness,

punished him for his pride by taking him down to limbo

where nothing ever lives or ever dies

and there they expanded his mind almost infinitely,

and placed within it everything there is to know

The position of every leaf on every tree,

when and where that leaf would fall,

knowledge of the tree when it was a sapling,

a seed, and when it was a campfire,

and then as ash, and to soil and back to a seed again

What you had for breakfast yesterday,

What you thought about the car accident you saw on the way to work

and the ladybug stuck on the windshield of that car

and what that ladybug had for breakfast yesterday . . .

EVERYTHING there is to know

right down to the position and velocity of every single particle in the universe

throughout the cone of time

which you might think is impossible

due to Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle

But somehow, he learned it

Then they put him in a room with a bed, a table a chair and a locked door,

and the two gods said unto him in their unison voice:

“NOW YOU WILL LEARN THE BOON AND BANE

OF REMEMBRANCE AND FORGETFULNESS!

WE HAVE ONE LAST THING TO TEACH YOU

THE DOOR IS LOCKED AND WILL ONLY UNLOCK

WHEN YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL WE HAVE TAUGHT YOU

ONCE IT DOES YOU CAN OPEN IT 

AND GO ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE AT ANY POINT IN TIME.”

Then the gods vanished, leaving the man in his room alone

and the Man Who Knew Everything spent billions of years in this room,

desperately trying to remember to forget

But one memory he tried to write with his own blood on the walls

a memory he felt terrified to forget

He tried to scratch all important words of the gods into his skin

but to his dismay he found that blood did not flow in Limbo

nor could he leave any mark on anything

He tried the door millions of times

but still it remained locked

and one day, after countless eons, the door finally unlocked

Did the man ever escape the room?

Was his fate was eternal?

After he forgot the last thing that they taught him

that the door would only unlock after he forgot

the last thing that they taught him,

what could cause him to try the door a final time?

Only after he forgot all that the gods taught him

and then spent further eons

forgetting that the door was locked all the times he tried it before

When he happened to try the door one time in curiosity

and it swung open and he went through

by then he had no knowledge of anywhere in the universe but his room

and that's exactly where it led

and on a guess he decided to go to the room at the point in time

when he first entered it billions of years before,

though he had no memory of that time

There he met the gods just after they decreed their cruel joke to his past self

and since the gods did not anticipate this,

they became frightened and vulnerable

For the first time, the god Forgetfulness knew what it was to remember

and the god Remembrance knew what is was to forget

The doomed men saw their one chance

Working together, the two selves took hold of the gods

the past self grappling Remembrance,

the the future self grappling Forgetfulness

and they threw the gods into each other, winking them out of existence

forever freeing the universe from their pernicious games

Then the Man Who Knew Everything and the Man Who Forgot Everything

Exited the room together, and reintegrated into one

and since the condition was now met

since now he had forgotten everything, and at the same time knew everything

he was free to go anywhere in the universe at any time

So he went back to his home and family and computer

and finished keying in this story at 10:07 pm, February 21, 2018.

And the moral is:

If you punish yourself long enough to forget what you've done, then you're doomed to punish yourself forever. Yet if you always remember what you've done, you may likewise never cease to punish yourself. To forgive yourself you must learn to remember and forget simultaneously.