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Chad was born on a Thursday. The 37th Thursday of 1984.
His birth certificate read 8 o’clock in the a.m. September 13th.
That was just a guess, however. He’d been found next to the blue and yellow and rusted newspaper stand downtown by a pair of teen sweethearts on their way to a late night showing of Red Dawn.
The lovebirds had found him on the evening of the 15th and taken him to the hospital. The doctors estimated he was no more than 3 days old. One of them, a tall, angular man with a rather unfortunate nose, had always professed a fondness for the number 13–probably because he fancied himself a sort of nonpareil, unique and somehow above “ordinary folk”—so, in questionable taste, he’d written the number in all applicable fields of the official documentation, consoling objectioning nursing staff with a “well at least it’s not Friday the 13th”.
Chad had been adopted shortly after. Not by the recent high-school grads, by an older couple, Stu and Martha. They’d named him Chad, because up to that point Chad hadn’t been Chad, Chad had just been abandoned infant #274.
But Chad wasn’t really an abandoned infant. He hadn’t been left-behind or forgotten or misplaced or discarded by his proginators.
He wasn’t even really an infant, because he hadn’t really been born. Not in the traditional sense.
He had been created, yes, a semi-distinct entity temporarily differentiated from the source, but he wasn’t truly separate from it, not really.
He was just the cross-section. A fragment of the cross-section. Punched out and dropped into 3-space for purposes unknown—and unknowable.
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Chad was of the Fleshcube, as most called it—most of the few who knew of it anyway.
Mystics, shamans, indigenous religious leaders and their disciples; the occasional unlucky acid tripper or clairvoyant.
They all called it the Fleshcube, even though it wasn’t really a cube, it was a tetrahedron—even though it wasn’t really that either.
But the God-fearing, the Gods-fearing, the Nature-fearing, the Indifferent-Machinations-Of-An-Uncaring-Clockwork-Universe-fearing, and the Generally Anxious, had had their cubic-dogmas—entrenched and reinforced over thousands of years—to adhere to, and occultists and cult leaders were usually too busy circlejerking themselves over the latest interpretations of Crowley and LaVey or raping underage girls to learn fancy words like “tetrahedron.”
Apparently too busy, even, for less-fancy words like “triangular” and “pyramid” either.
Which is all just as well really; “Fleshpyramid” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Ergo: Fleshcube.
But it wasn’t really a cube, it was a tetrahedron—but it wasn’t really a tetrahedron either.
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5-cell, pentatope, pentachoron, 4-simplex, 4-dimensional pyramid, hypertetrahedron.
There are many names for it, that tetrahedral analogue of the hypercube, all laughably inadequate descriptors of Fleshahedron topology, but the best any meager primate brain might aspire to comprehend.
As inconceivable to the human mind as any folded-up tesseract, hypersphere, or quotient of integer divided by zero.
Though Individuals throughout history did sometimes catch glimpses of it. In dreams and nightmares, during psychedelic waltzes and near-death experiences.
But fleeting, obscured, always from oblique angles.
Only ever a coup d'œil, never its totality.
Full understanding always distant. Quintessence far-off and ever-receding, curve never quite reaching asymptote.
Like treading the wrong way up a gradually accelerating escalator, destined never to behold the wonders atop no matter the vigor of stride.
Like walking as a child, hand-in-hand with your mother, along a grand, curved hallway.
Its floors embellished with elaborate wood inlays, fascinating geometric patterns of seemingly infinite detail and complexity. Great vaulted ceilings towering above, ornate crystal drops of baroque chandeliers spitting light in ten thousand directions.
Walls a continuous reflective surface so adorned with gilt and gold that the air itself has luster.
Releasing the warm, comforting grip of your mother’s soft hand and slowing—just for a moment—to stare aghast at the fearsome beasts adorning the walls threatening to claw free of their mounts and give chase to that small, scared thing below.
A low hum in the distance behind, not quite a growl from the blackness, but perhaps of things better left unfaced.
The feeble, frightened thing that is you turning back to mother—so distant she’s more an apparition now.
Her—silhouetted against dazzling golden light at that vast hallway’s apex—beckoning you to follow.
Running to catch up as she turns briskly away.
Her beautiful specter forevermore just out of sight around the corner.
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