The Legend of the Jump Car
The world was a Car-World. The living things were cars and they lived Car-Lives.
The features of the world determined the society that emerged. Numbered platforms stretched from the ground all the way to the unknown stretches of the heavens. One car occupied each platform. It was better to be higher because of course it was. Who would want to be lower?
There was no transportation between levels, no communication. And yet everyone was aware of all the others. They knew by some innate sense, could feel them above and below. That's how you knew who you were and what you had. It was better to be higher.
Each car driving back and forth, furiously, never going beyond the certain stretch of platform that defined everything about them. What kind of life would that be? Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. I wish I was higher I wish I was higher I wish I was higher. There is nothing else there is nothing else there is nothing else.
Would you wish for something more? How would you even know that there was anything else?
It was the clouds. All the Cars, living their Car-lives in the Car-World could see the far off clouds, all perfectly shaped, zigging this way and zagging that, they would know there was something else. They would yearn.
The thought formed in each Car-mind independently. Not all at once, but given enough time, they all knew it. They didn't have the words to describe the concept clearly but they all meant the same thing. They all desired the same thing in the deepest part of their Car-Hearts. They wanted to jump.
What if a Car could jump? What if the barriers that defined the world could be transcended with the ease and grace of an acrobat? What if your lot in Car-life wasn't defined by the platform of your Car-birth? What if you could go as high as you could jump?
Some say there never was any Jump Car. "A Jumping Car? What's next? A driving cloud?" they'd say and they laugh and laugh. Those Cars are wrong. There was a Jump Car.
It started at 0. From the Bottom. Of course it did. That was where the yearning was the strongest. At the bottom, the wish to be higher isn't some idle fantasy but a full-time job. There is nothing else. No Cars below to pity, only Cars above. No one knows if the changes started as a result of the yearning or if the Jump Car was always different. No one paid any attention to the Car at the Bottom.
But it was different. It was blue. Not the light blue of the sky, nor the dark blue of the ocean of which Cars knew nothing, but a blue in-between. The blue of working collars, the blue of striving. The Jump Car had an antenna, waving back and forth, as it forever paced the platform. Maybe the antenna only mad it that much more aware of the infinity above. And the Jump Car could jump.
Zero was always green. When 1 turned from red to green as the wheels of the Jump Car touched down the world was never the same. What must it have been like at the time of that first jump? To have been alive at the dawn of a new age? To believe maybe anything could be accomplished? It must have appeared as the very face of the Car-God.
What to do with two Cars on a single level? Cars knew no stoppibg, they only went and went. Collision would be death. The red pedestrian Car was afraid and the Jump Car was exhilarated. How to avoid a crash? Only one way. Time to jump again. And the blue Jump Car leaped again and again over the Red Car, who went about its business as ever before but now filled with both hope and terror. Anything is possible. Even your death.
After the novelty of 1, the Jump Car made quick work of the successive platforms. Its mind was on fire. I'm going to the top. But it's sense of the number of Cars above never decreased, even as the feeling of Cars below exploded into existence.
Everything turned on timing. The Jump Car went at its speed. The Red Cars went at theirs. The Jump Car predicted how it could avoid crashing into its Brother-Cars.
Some platforms were empty, unspoiled kingdoms that fell to the Jump Car. Should it stop there? How could it? If the impulse to settle for something less than the best existed at all within that Car, it never would have left 0.
And then everything changed. The Jump Car was the Car-World-Changer. But the Car-World wasn't exactly the way the Jump Car had imagined from the bottom. There were other Cars of other colors and they went at their own paces. Yellow Cars, slow like the light, chugged along as if they were dying. The puffs of smoke emanating from their tail-pipes clogging the intake of the Jump Car. That was the warning, jump now or die. The Jump Car jumped. That was its nature. It cleared the Yellow Cars with ease.
The Yellow Cars made sense in their morbid way, like dying suns. The Pink Cars were a whole New Car-World. They went fast. Very fast. The wind as the Jump Car jumped to a Pink Car level almost blew it away. Jump fast! Or die. The Jump Car jumped.
There were more Red Cars. Like farmers or grass or buildings. They had to be there. But then there were others. The Black Cars did not take the presence of the Jump Car lightly. They didn't continue to go back and forth. They turned. They turned toward the Jump Car. Did they want to kill it? Was Black the Color of their cold Car Hearts? Or were they confused and only wanted to be nearer the magic of jumping? Who could say? The Jump Car didn't have time to answer the questions. It only had time to jump.
There was the Orange Car. Oh, what it must have been like to experience the Car-Life of an Orange Car. When it got to the end of the platform, instead of turning around like every other Car, it kept going. It went behind the curtain of the Car-World and came out the other side. What was there? What was it like? Is this it? The Orange Car can't tell. There is only Jump.
When the Jump Car reached its first Teal Car it was confused. Outwardly it wasn't behaving any different from the Red Car. But it was Teal. What secrets did it hold?
The Jump Car didn't have the luxury of taking time to figure it out. It jumped to the level of the Teal Car. The two cars were on a collision course. It was a game of chicken except the Jump Car knew only it could jump, avoid the catastrophe. But it flinched. The Jump Car accepted in its Car Heart that it was time to die. The ride was over. It had gotten farther than anyone could have imagined.
The Teal Car jumped over the Jump Car. What?! Other Cars can jump? The Jump Car wasn't the only jumper? Why hadn't this been known? Why did the Teal Cars stay on their levels? Why didn't they try to reach the heavens? The Jump Car had no time to wonder though it burned to. It could only jump ever onward.
Level after level fell to the Jump Car. Red turned to Green. Red Cars, Yellow, Pink, Black, Orange, and Teal all appeared above the Jump Car and ended below. Social mobility was invented.
What did they think of the Jump Car, all those Cars that it passed? They envied it, they feared it, they worshipped it, they spurned it. They reacted like Cars.
There was no end in sight. There never was. There never could be. There is a Bottom but there is no Top. The Car World is infinite. Somewhere in that stretch between the Bottom and forever the Jump Car died. I wish I could tell you an epic story of a new Color Car or a deadly combination of Yellow and Pink or something. But it wasn't anything exciting. It was an Orange Car, going the pace they all did, that took out a tired, careless Jump Car. The Car died and the Legend was born.
As long as Cars exist in the World, there has to be a Jump Car to challenge the heavens. There must be a Car to remind them all that anything is possible, that death is unavoidable, that it is always worthwhile to strive.