The Torch March 2018 final

The Purple Dot
Written by Anthony Unger
A dark serpentine world with curving columns swooping
down from a high, circular edifice and a force that
was busy, carving a planet out of nothing, floated in the
darkness of space. One moment there was nothing
except a ball of complete nothingness, and the next
there was a single insignificant thing floating rather peculiarly
above the ball of matter that would soon be
called a planet.
This insignificant thing was a pool of multi-colored liquid
that swarmed around in the boundaries that were
set by a cold pair of stone hands. Soon enough, the liquid
bubbled into an orange essence that only explained
itself as having the properties of carrot juice. I don’t
know why this was so, but whoever or whatever was
creating this world had a strange humour that could
not be matched by any other. The orange substance
suddenly glowed brightly from the deep with an ember
light that seemed to float upwards towards the surface.
But in defiance, the pool of orange extinguished the
light like it was a fire, only for it to resume its course
once again with success; good had defeated evil with
no sweat upon his brow. This, for now, was the pin
amongst a morsel of wheat or, a thing amongst nothing
but emptiness.
This. Was. Block. The world of Block.
It was forming, and this was the first item on the agenda.
My words however, stop for circumference. Ah! A
humourous word, circumference: “Sir Circumference,
would you please attend to the king?” asks the imaginary
knight who stands guard to the tall door that leads
to the king’s own space. But sadly, the world of Block
knows no such thing as a knight, not for many years at
least.
The ember light stretched out a hand from beneath the
juice, and behold, a sight; a form crawled out with arms
that lurched out for something to pull with. It was a
blob, then a spot, and finally it seemed like more of a
dot than before. He stood up to full height, and from
the view of a triangle eye that was purposely placed in
the center of the dot, he perceived the empty world
that now had oceans of blue snaking into mountains
that held small amounts of structures. And seeing
beauty for the first time, he spoke to himself and all
who listened, “I look at the world as I exit my birth
place, and then stand at the edge of holding hands
clutching a figurative raindrop.”
As he said this with a wise sense, a tail grew at his back,
a tail that curved and swayed to the sides with a fluent
gesture. He looked down at his tubular arms that
seemed to be coming from his sides, but he was not
really sure how. At the end of the two black twig-like
arms, a square of the same color existed; the dot decided
to call these ‘hands’. His legs also seemed to sprout
from the bottom of the dot, even though it wasn’t flat
in any way. And joined at the legs at the very bottom,
were two more squares that looked as if they came
from a world of only two dimensions.
The only colors that existed on the dot were the purple
coat of the dot itself, and the pitch-black color of the
limbs that were more than important. Why was he this
way, why was he such an image? And most importantly,
why was he a dot? This is what he was determined
to find out; this was the question that now surged
through his small mind. But the truth was, only Block
knew the answer, only the creator knew why. I could
only really say I really did not know.
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