The Death of Albert Roth

In the center of the restaurant, Albert Roth sat down. Nothing had happened. This was the place, but perhaps this was not the time. He would have to wait.

But how long? How long would he have to wait for the Aleph to show itself?

As Albert thought this, the floor sank in around him, as if he was a marble on a rubber sheet, a sun in the center of a solar system, and then the floor swallowed him up.

He found himself in a maze, a labyrinth. A labyrinth made of words and images, of time and space. And he knew: at the center of the labyrinth would be the Aleph. And there he would see all things again.

And so he set out, scribbling directions and arrows on the paper walls (which were thin, yet could not be ripped). He encountered dead ends and had to double back; he found walls papered with the false directions of prior seekers; yet he kept going. He kept walking the labyrinth until he realized.

The paper on the walls was describing his life. Not just his life, but all of his lives, every choice he made, the timeline of every decision, every moment. And not just his life, but the lives of those he had known. He read about the lives of his brother, the lives of his parents, the lives of everyone he had ever known. And he knew.

He would not find the Aleph within these walls, within the labyrinth. Because the labyrinth was the Aleph. In the labyrinth, he was able to see all things.

Yet he ached to find that flash of light that would show him everything at once. He ran down corridors, trying to find the center, even knowing that there was no center to an infinite labyrinth.

So he at last sat down and, knowing he would die here, in this place, read the words upon the wall:

"I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe."

"I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity."