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Title: Ennui
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Illustrator: Leslie Ross
Release date: July 15, 2026 [eBook #79099]
Language: English
Original publication: Holyoke, Mass.: Columbia Publications, Inc., 1952
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79099
Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
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Ennui
by Milton Lesser
Pure fantasy, of course, but you must admit that it’s quite logical,
if you grant the basic premise...
You could not blame me for being bitter. I work hard and I work all
day; and when I came home that night, my wife was sitting on the sofa.
She had been swimming in the lake, and she wore only a skimpy bathing
suit which showed to best advantage the ivory fire of her young body.
A man was sitting with her, dressed in a pair of bathing shorts. His
arms were around her. Her arms were around him.
I did not know the man.
I only knew that I wished he--wasn’t. If he _wasn’t_, then I could be
happy with my wife. I’d be playing a game, it would be pretense, but I
would be happy. _If_ he wasn’t; an intriguing idea.
Gloria got up, brushing her hair back with her hands. She said. “Don’t
make a scene, Gerald.”
I smiled. “It was you who made the scene.”
“Gerald, I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. That makes everything fine; you thought it would be all
right if you did this behind my back. Strumpet--”
The man stood up. He was bigger than I, taller, wider, stronger. “Don’t
get nasty,” he said.
I wanted to get nasty. “You just shut up and leave this to my wife and
me.”
He didn’t want to shut up. He told me it was his business, too--and I
must have raised my hands as if to fight, because he hit me. It was a
good solid blow on the side of the head, and I sat down hard. It took a
while to focus my eyes, and when I did, he was standing over me, hands
on hips, waiting for me to get up.
I did not get up. Now, in earnest, I wished he wasn’t. This would be
the ideal time to put into practice my theoretical thinking. I slid
further back along the floor, and Gloria began to laugh. She told me I
looked like seven different varieties of a worm.
I pointed my finger at the man. I said, “You don’t exist.”
Gloria screamed. “Phil!” she cried. “Phil! Where did he go so fast? He
just disappeared...”
2
I was a theoretical solipsist long before that night in which I became
a practical, practising solipsist. The idea is one with which nearly
everyone toys at one time or another. You’ve done it yourself: you’ve
thought--what if no one else exists, what if no one else really
exists, what if I’m the only being in existence with an awareness of
that existence? Everyone else, everything else is just a figment of
my imagination, a plaything, an unreality created for my amusement.
People, places, the car I drive in--everything. History, even history.
It never happened. The records were there only for my amusement, like
all else, phantom shadows in a phantom world, meaningless except where
I would give them meaning.
You couldn’t disprove it; if you wanted, it would keep gnawing at you
all the time, because it was not a theory you could disprove. Of course
everyone else would pretend, would make believe that he existed, too.
He had to--it was for your amusement. But he was an automaton, less
than an automaton. Your mind gave him a shadow of reality, and you
could take it away any time you wanted.
I took it away for the first time that night. I told the man, Phil--who
had been making love to my wife--that he did not exist. That particular
segment of my imagination had grown odious, and I did not want it any
more.
Phil disappeared; he was never heard from again.
Gloria never questioned it. She’s a figment of my imagination which
is beautiful, but not too bright. Phil had run out when she wasn’t
looking, she reasoned; the fact that she _had_ been looking all the
time did not disturb her--she took Phil’s abrupt disappearance as a
matter of course.
I didn’t. It had opened a new world for me. There were many theoretical
solipsists in the world, but I was the only practising solipsist. The
reason for that was simple. I, alone, had real existence. The world was
my plaything.
* * * * *
A week later, I made Tom Nugent disappear. I wanted his job at the
brokerage firm, but he was a good man and his job was not one for the
taking--unless he did not have it anymore. I told him he did not exist.
He did not.
Two weeks later, the boss was convinced that Tom had left town for one
reason or another; I got the job.
Soon after that, Gloria began to bore me. Perhaps I had married her
because it had been a challenge--there wasn’t another woman in the city
as beautiful as Gloria, as desirous. If I could keep her in the face of
that, I’d have power.
Now the challenge was gone, and the power; if Gloria had another
lover, I would make him disappear. I would see him and he would not
exist. Just like that. I suddenly did not give a damn about Gloria.
As a matter of fact, I might have more fun filling the role of the
now non-existing Phil. But Gloria would object: Gloria was that not
too-uncommon female who is on the one hand possessive, and on the
other, a born maker of cuckolds.
“Gloria,” I asked her one night, “do you have any other lovers?”
She shook her head. “Won’t you please forget about Phil? It won’t
happen again.”
“I know,” I said. “That particular episode won’t happen again, because
Phil does not exist.”
A little sob escaped her throat, before she could stop it. “Oh! Is Phil
dead?”
It was the same thing; I told her he was dead. Even if I were bored
with her, I still could admire her acting ability. The tears were
brimming in her eyes, but they did not spill. She said she hoped no one
would be unhappy.
I was bored. I yawned, and Gloria suggested that we go to bed. In
that respect, she had been a well trained little none-entity. She had
suggested exactly what I would have wanted--last night or the night
before. Or a year ago. I did not want it now.
“Gloria,” I said, “would you like a divorce?”
She blanched. “My gosh, no; what would I want a divorce for?”
“I don’t give a damn,” I told her. “You see, my dear--_I_ want a
divorce.”
She got up and walked up and down for a few minutes. I watched the
smooth liquid motion of that which, without any challenge, had come to
bore me. “I won’t give you a divorce,” she said; “there are no grounds,
anyway.”
“There is Phil,” I reminded her.
She laughed. “Phil is dead. You said so, Gerald. Your word against mine
now--and there are no grounds.”
I sighed.
I felt no recriminations. I had given her the way out--if she had
wanted to take it. The fact that she did not, was none of my doing;
besides, as an unreal being, she did not matter one way or the other.
In the outmoded theories, every existing item has two things. It has
essence and quididity. Or, put into more simple terms, it has whatness
and thatness. Gloria, along with everyone else, had whatness. She had
an essence. But she lacked thatness--she had no quididity.
I told her she did not exist. And as a mere essence creature with
nothing of quid--she stopped existing, abruptly and painlessly. One
moment Gloria was, the next, she wasn’t.
3
This has unfortunate repercussions. It caused the death--I suppose it
is the equivalent of death, you take away the quididity and you take
away all that is really important--of nearly every pretty girl in the
vicinity. You see, I lacked one thing which Phil had--I lacked his
charm; so the girls spurned me. When they spurned me, I took their
existence away. They had no right to spurn me, and thus did not merit
their quididity.
After a while, I became bored with the whole idea, anyway; what did
a woman have to offer but the pleasures of the flesh? And are the
pleasures of the flesh alone significant? That was silly, and, with
some effort, I could show it to mankind.
I willed woman out of existence. All women. Everything that was human
and at the same time female. Don’t misunderstand--I did not hate women;
I was just bored, and I wanted to show the world there was more to life.
I became aware of my oversight later. With no women there could be no
reproduction, and I had, in effect, destroyed the human race. Then, I
had to smile. What did it matter? They did not really exist. I alone
existed, and from the very nature of my existence, alone in all the
world, I was an inferred immortal. The destruction of a means of
reproduction would be quite meaningless to me.
* * * * *
And meanwhile, I was amused by the situation. I don’t know how many men
went insane those first few days; suddenly, without reason, without
explanation, all their womenfolk were taken away. They ceased to exist.
The human race was now uni-sexual--and it had only a limited number of
years left, anyway. Scientists tried to figure it out, but they got
nowhere. Over one billion people--all female, suddenly disappeared. No
one saw another female again, any place, any time; the scientists were
stumped.
But some of the cultists had a holiday. We had been living the life
of flesh and sin too long, and now we were being punished. Oh, this
was not said by the true religions--they had no answer, and, like the
scientists, they merely told us that God, in His infinite wisdom, did
what was best. The scientists closed up shop and went home. At that
point, perhaps sooner, they had begun to bore me--and I willed them out
of existence. Every scientist. Every last one. And you’d be surprised
to learn that that can take in a lot of people. With women gone, no one
noticed the disappearance of the scientists as a unit.
4
It is an odd paradox. I could destroy but I could not recreate, and,
having destroyed, I wanted to repent. But there was no way I could
recreate women.
The whole world, as a consequence, bored me. I went home that night and
I got drunk; then I willed the world out of existence.
All of it; all, of course, but me. I floated off into the void, and the
sun had only eight planets.
My body became cumbersome. I just floated. I willed my body out of
existence--it was only a figment of my imagination, anyway. Then
I could travel at the speed of thought itself--I could leave that
laggard, light, far far behind.
But first I had a job to do. I looked at Mercury. Scorched on
one side, frozen on the other, it was dead. Venus was a world of
swamps--primitive, uninteresting life. Mars had an old and a dead
culture, a dying world now. Nothing beyond-- The solar system of eight
planets bored me. I willed it out of existence.
The sun looked all alone. I destroyed it.
* * * * *
The Centauri double-star system was even worse. No life there at all,
not even planets. I passed it by in a huff, putting an end to its
useless existence.
On a planet circling Deneb, hundreds of light years away, I found
humanoid life. It was easy to will an essence-without-quididity out of
existence and take over its body. I did, but unfortunately, I did not
know the ways of this world. They adjudged me insane and they put me
in what I suppose was an asylum for the insane. It was interesting at
first, but after a time, I became bored with it.
I destroyed it.
They became angry, and they marshalled all sorts of weapons against me.
I destroyed the weapons. They became very angry indeed, but it was a
meaningless, impotent anger.
I grew restless.
I destroyed them. Destroyed their world. Deneb seemed alone, as the sun
had seemed. I destroyed Deneb.
Actually, I was amazed to find how many lifeless star systems there
were, and how unsatisfying those that had life could be. I began to
think that all this creation for my benefit had been a serious mistake.
It could be rectified, of course; I willed the galaxy out of existence.
5
Even at the speed of thought--which is infinitely faster than the speed
of light--it took time to reach the Andromeda galaxy, and more time to
prove what I had thought would be the case all along. Some things there
were a novelty but there was nothing which, after a time, did not bore
me.
The Andromeda galaxy ceased to be.
I can’t say how long it took me to explore the nearest five hundred
galaxies. Time ceased to have meaning for me. I was bored and restless,
and nothing which I saw satisfied me. One galaxy after another, I
willed them out of existence.
The universe was as disappointing as the earth had been. If only I
could start over, from scratch...
There was the awful paradox, I could destroy but I could not
create--and I was bored...
6
In a fit of anger, I willed the entire universe out of existence. I was
fed up. If there was nothing which could satisfy me, there was no point
in all this foolish existence. I snuffed it out. I snuffed everything
out.
I floated alone in space, a bodiless entity, all alone in an infinite
sea of empty space. How monotonous...
I tried to create. I concentrated. My bodiless mind was tortured with
the effort. I could not fashion one single hydrogen atom, not one atom
to amuse me. It really did not matter. Soon it would have bored me.
There is nothing I can do, and everywhere I go, it is the same.
Emptiness. For a time, I turned inside and explored my mind and found
it interesting. Only for a time.
It became--boring. Nothing here for me, nothing to hold my interest.
I am not worthy of existence if I cannot hold my own interest.
This, surely, is as far as solipsism can go. Perhaps I, myself, am
merely an idea in my mind, an idea with no real existence. But that
does not seem possible. If I were an idea in my mind, then I would need
a mind to have that idea. Then perhaps there would be an idea above
that mind, and a mind above the new idea. It is hopeless...
Or David Hume could have had the answer. I am merely a collocation of
ideas, with no real existence. Nothing exists. Everything which used to
exist had been my idea, and I destroyed it. I destroyed it all because
it bored me.
All that is left is me, and I am merely a collocation of ideas, with
no real existence. A bundle of impulses, of less than impulses. That
is, perhaps, the greatest joke of all. I destroyed everything because
nothing pleased me--and now I find that my egoism was unwarranted,
since I do not have real existence.
I float in emptiness, with nothing to do, and I am weary. I am
horribly, terribly, endlessly bored. I must find the answer.
If I were to will myself out of existence, and if I ceased to exist,
then I would know the final answer. Only nothingness, having no
existence to begin with, is real. Quididity is meaningless. Then, if I
cease to exist, I’ll know the answer. But I would not know it, because
I would not be...
But I am bored and I must try it. Now...
7
...
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, December 1952
(Vol. 1, No. 1.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected.
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