Out From the Ether

The second draft of a short story about the elusiveness of creativity. It all stemmed from a TED talk video-clip featuring Elizabeth Gilbert.

First he tried dancing and swooping around the room, taking the form of the shadows that scattered about from his peripheral vision. That didn’t work. The writer has grown accustomed to the shadows that may, or may not float, around his field of view. They aren’t real, the writer has always been told, just the brain playing tricks. 

The ethervoid grew tired from all the moving about, and tried bellowing from the bottom of his black ether. But still nothing. The writer barely nudged an inch except for his hands tapping away at the blue Webster typewriter. 

Well, surely he will run out of ideas soon enough, won’t he? The ethervoid pondered, surely he’ll run out of ideas and need me desperately. The black shadowy void rested his featureless smoke-like head on his smoke-like hands, listening to the melodic punching of keys filling the otherwise silent room.

A few moments later, the key strokes began to slow. The writer was running out of steam, and the tapping finally came to a stop. The writer stared blankly at the semi-filled page before him. He seem unsure of the words he had written, perhaps he was unimpressed. The writer scratched his head and stood up, pushing his rolling chair behind him with the backs of his knees, keeping his eyes focused sharply on the half-written page. 

The ethervoid sat up now, intensely watching the writer’s every move, as he paced around the office. Maybe today will be the day he is finally noticed, finally accepted as the living and breathing eternal portal to the vastness of the cosmos that he is.

Every human is assigned their own creative ethervoid to guide them on their journey through life. However, before the ethervoid can lead their writer down the most beautiful and abundant paths, the writer must first acknowledge the existence of their creative guardians. And, perhaps that day had finally come for him. A day that some ethervoids never get to experience before they are sent to the absorption facility, once their assigned human perishes. 

An hour passed. And then two, then three, and the writer hadn’t made any progress. His greasy hair stuck out, making him look rather feral. The writer exhaled loudly and dramatically, flinging himself backward against the his chair and slumping down, placing his head on the back rest. 

Standing up, the creative ethervoid licked his theoretical lips, bracing himself as if he were ready to pounce on the writer. Just say the words, thought the ethervoid, ask for help, ask for something beyond yourself!

The writer, still slumped in his chair with his eyes closed and his arms now behind his head, uttered into the empty room what seemed like failure.

“I’m lost, stuck, and none of any of this makes sense! If it doesn’t make sense to the writer writing it, how can I expect readers to make sense of it!”

Say it! Say it! shouted the ethervoid, flapping his formless arms about the air. 

And just then, the writer opened his eyes.

“I need help!” the writer confessed. 

And out from the corner of his eye, a spirling shadow appeared. The ethervoid could finally be seen. 

“Agh!” the writer leapt up from his chair and landed backwards on a pile of random paper scraps flooding the floor of his office. 

“What are you?” demanded the writer. “Have I gone mad?”

“No no no, calm down, Joel. Everything is quite alright.” The ethervoids voice was long and drawn out, a voice that came from another dimension. The anthropomorphic shadow drifted its way down from the corner of the room down near Joel’s desk and hovered there, no larger than an inflatable beachball. 

“I am Wilson, your creative ethervoid. On your birthday, Feburary 10th, 1976, I was assigned to you, as your protector of sorts. I am here to watch over you and your creative endeavors. I am here to help you, Joel.”

Joel rubbed his eyes with one hand and began lifting himself up from the ground with the other. His chest was rapidly raising up and down.

“But I"I"I don’t... I don’t understand, what are you again?” asked Joel. 

“I am an ethervoid. I’m a link to the endless pools of knowledge. A portal agent, really. I’m supposed to oversee the requests of my assigned human and other species.”

Wilsons body never took on a static shape, the black smoke-like ether that formed his appearance was in a constant motion, always spiraling and twisting and turning. 

“What do"what do you mean by ‘pools of knowledge?” Joels face was pale white with a brow that was furled and his mouth stuck open slightly. 

“Yes, your species usually refer to it as consciousness, but we ethervoids never really liked that term. In fact, many of your kind don’t even realize its existence.”

“Okay, consciousness, yeah alright. Um, and you mentioned something about other species? Like animals and whatnot? Feral beasts? How do you watch over their creative endeavors?” Joel’s voice hinted at his reluctance to believe any of this. He had simply gone mad, this was all in his head. 

“Oh Joel, you’ve got it all wrong. Other intelligent species, different planets from yours. We work with everyone from this universe. We are all the ‘collective consciousness’ if you will.”

“Wait wait"what?” Joels hand slowly rose to his forehead and his mouth was wider. 

“Well you couldn’t possibly have thought humans were the only intelligent creative in a universe filled with galaxies similar to your own? Hell, I’m part of an intelligent species and I don’t even have skin! There are the Norks, the Sevin, oh and the green tinted Reami, their creativity has been stuck in a dry spell for a while""we just can’t keep up, us ethervoids.”

“Right, of course,” muttered Joel with eyes large and bulging staring at the floor. 

“What does all of this mean? You say you were assigned to me, but for what? Are you supposed to have an answer for every one of my problems? Are you some kind of genie?”

“Well I’m not just a cheat sheet for life, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m your creative guardian, your genius, I supply you with ideas straight from the ether that flow through me first. At which point I pass them on to you and you get all the credit. Sounds good doesn’t it?” Wilson conformed his breathy presence and sat down on nothing, floating in mid air. 

“Yes, yes I suppose it does. But when you put it that way, you don’t seem to enjoy this whole process very much"as if you want your work to be acknowledged.”

“Nonsense, we ethervoids are not looking for fame or fortune. It wouldn’t benefit us in any way even if we got it. No, we ethervoids are happy as long as the universe has access to the knowledge it deserves. If we are able to open an minds up this fact, we have done our jobs.”

Joel seemed to be calming down. His breathing slowed and his mouth was no longer ajar. 

“But why aren't there a billion writers and a billion painters and dancers and singers and guitarists? If everyone has access to the ether, to an endless landscape of good ideas, why don't they use it? Why doesn’t everyone know?”

“It is a part of our ethervoid rulebook, we are not allowed to help our assigned species unless they acknowledge the existence of something beyond themselves.” Wilson sat up and began drifting around the room. “Haven't you ever wondered why all of your good ideas just seemed to come to you? From nowhere in particular? They hit you at random times, and no one ever seems to care where they came from, they just accept it. I’ve always wondered how your species has come so far, while being so apparently stubborn.”

Joel followed Wilson’s movements around his office, craning his neck, watching him inspect the books that laid on his bed stand.

“Humans have the highest rate of creative death, you know,” Wilson continued. “Never recognizing the amazing potential you all hold, locked up in doubt. Once they surrender themselves to this seemingly invisible force, then we are allowed to step in.”

“This is all starting to sound like a religion. Perhaps I slipped from my chair and hit the back of my skull on one of these books, here. Perhaps this is all just a dream, or a hallucination, perhaps I finally knocked something loose in my head,” said Joel.

“I assure you this is all very real, Joel. Go ahead, pinch yourself.”

“What? Why?” asked the writer with a twisted face.

“Just do it,” demanded the ethervoid. 

Unsure of whether or not the large shadow-like blob that hovered in his office was dangerous or not, Joel reluctantly slid his left woolen arm sleeve up to his elbow and pinched himself.

“Feel anything?” asked Wilson, with just a hint of smugness.

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, there you have it, you’re not dreaming. You can’t feel pain in a dream. Any more questions?”

“This is quite a lot to take in. I feel a bit sick to be honest.”

The writer did indeed look green in the face, resembling a young Reami, just with smaller eyes. The ethervoid noticed this and changed his tone a bit. 

“Look here, I know this sounds rather crazy from your point of view, but this is all a good thing, you have to trust me.”

“What was your name again?” asked Joel. 

“Wilson,” the ethervoid replied. 

“Hmm, Wilson, right. That’s a funny name for a ethervoid, don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Nevermind,” said Joel.

                             

   *****

Wilson vomited a misty cloud of ether that rested in the space above Joel’s head. There were what seemed to be a million tiny flickering stars scattered across the mini-universe that floated before him. 

“What do I do?” asked Joel.

“Pick one. Every light you see is an idea, a thought. Every great idea that ever has been, or ever will be, gleams in your very office, Joel.”

Joel’s breath hurried once again, unsure about everything happening. His pincher arm formed a claw with his forefinger and thumb and reach up overhead, snagging a light. It felt gelatinous, thought Joel, but looked like a small, burning ember.

Joel slowing pulled the idea closer to him, but before he could inspect the glowing light any further, his skin had absorbed it. The energy pulsed through his body once and died, leaving behind a slight shiver in his arms and back. 

And before Joel could comment of the strange and utterly beautiful thing that had just happened, his fingers rushed to the plastic white keys of his typewriter and began punching them wildly. 

Author's Note

This is only a second draft, so there are some grammatical hiccups, some on accident, some on purpose. I'm only putting this up to hopefully get some feedback on the content itself or the use of dialog.