After the theatre disappeared, the traveller continued walking.
He no longer searched for the first moment.
He no longer searched for the place before the world.
He no longer searched for the thing that had caused everything.
And he no longer searched for the stage upon which the universe might have appeared.
He had begun to suspect that all these questions had been asking for things that could not exist until something more basic had happened.
But what?
He walked until he came to a wall.
It stretched farther than he could see.
There was nothing on one side of it that he could distinguish from the other.
No building.
No field.
No road.
No entrance.
Only the wall.
In the middle was a doorway.
The traveller approached.
There was no door in the doorway.
Only an opening.
He looked through it.
Nothing seemed to change.
He stepped through.
Still nothing seemed to change.
He turned around.
“Why is there a doorway here?”
A voice answered:
“Because you have crossed it.”
“But crossed from where to where?”
The voice said nothing.
The traveller looked around.
Then he noticed something.
On one side of the opening, the ground seemed slightly different.
Not much.
But enough.
He stepped back.
There.
Different.
He stepped forward.
Different again.
He looked at the ground.
“What is this?”
“A distinction.”
“Between two things?”
“Not yet.”
The traveller frowned.
“How can there be a distinction if there are not yet two things?”
The voice replied:
“That is why you have come.”
The traveller looked again.
He saw the opening.
On one side was what he now called here.
On the other was what he now called there.
But the more he looked, the stranger it seemed.
The wall had not simply separated two places that were already there.
The opening had made the difference between them matter.
He walked through again.
Here.
There.
Here.
There.
Each crossing seemed to create the two sides more clearly.
He sat beside the doorway.
“So the doorway does not merely stand between two places.”
“No.”
“It makes an inside and an outside possible.”
“Yes.”
“But there was no inside before there was an outside.”
“No.”
“And no outside before there was an inside.”
“No.”
“And the doorway belongs to neither.”
The voice said:
“Nor is it simply between them.”
The traveller looked carefully at the opening.
He had been thinking of a boundary as a line drawn between two things.
But perhaps it was not always like that.
Perhaps sometimes the boundary was what allowed the two things to become distinguishable in the first place.
He stood.
“Then a distinction can create what it distinguishes.”
“Yes.”
The traveller thought of the theatre.
The stage had become a background because something appeared against it.
The light had become light because darkness surrounded it.
But now he saw something deeper.
The distinction did not merely reveal the two sides.
It made the two sides available as sides.
He looked through the doorway.
“What was here before the distinction?”
The voice answered:
“What do you mean by here?”
The traveller smiled.
“You have caught me again.”
“Yes.”
He walked further along the wall.
At last he found another opening.
This one was smaller.
Then another.
And another.
Soon the wall was filled with openings.
Each doorway divided something.
A room from a corridor.
A garden from a path.
An inside from an outside.
A place to enter from a place to leave.
The traveller began to understand.
The world did not become intelligible merely because things existed.
Things became intelligible because differences allowed them to be distinguished.
But then a more troubling thought occurred to him.
He returned to the first doorway.
“If distinction makes two things possible, then the first distinction could not have been a difference between two fully formed things.”
“Why not?”
“Because then the two things would already have been distinguishable.”
“Yes.”
“And if they were already distinguishable, the distinction would not be first.”
The voice was silent.
The traveller continued.
“So the first distinction cannot simply separate two things that were waiting for it.”
“No.”
“It must be the distinction that makes two things possible.”
“Yes.”
He stared at the doorway.
That was almost impossible to imagine.
There could not be two things waiting on either side.
There could not be a boundary waiting between them.
There could not be a completed world divided by the first distinction.
There could only be—
He stopped.
“What?”
“Possibility.”
The voice answered:
“Now you are getting closer.”
The traveller looked at the empty doorway.
Before it, there was no inside and outside.
Then the distinction appeared.
And with it came the possibility of inside and outside.
Before it, there was no this and that.
Then the distinction appeared.
And with it came the possibility of this and that.
Before it, there was no before and after.
Then the distinction appeared.
And with it came the possibility of before and after.
The traveller began to see the pattern.
Perhaps the beginning was not the appearance of the first thing.
Perhaps it was the appearance of a difference from which things could become distinguishable.
Perhaps it was not an event that happened first.
Perhaps it was the condition under which events could begin to happen.
He looked down at the ground.
“What, then, does first mean?”
The voice replied:
“Perhaps what makes first possible.”
The traveller stood very still.
He had spent so long looking backwards.
He had imagined the beginning as the earliest point in a line.
But perhaps the beginning was not a point on the line.
Perhaps it was what allowed there to be a line.
Not the first event.
The condition under which events could become ordered.
Not the first object.
The condition under which objects could become distinguishable.
Not the first moment.
The condition under which moments could become moments.
The traveller looked through the doorway again.
He suddenly realised that he had been asking the wrong kind of question.
He had been asking:
“What happened first?”
But perhaps the deeper question was:
“What made happening possible?”
He had asked:
“What came before?”
But perhaps the deeper question was:
“What made before possible?”
He had asked:
“What was there?”
But perhaps the deeper question was:
“What made there possible?”
The traveller laughed.
The voice asked:
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because every time I think I have reached the beginning, I find that I have arrived somewhere later.”
“Later?”
He smiled.
“See? I am still doing it.”
The doorway seemed to shimmer.
For a moment the traveller could no longer tell which side was which.
Then he understood.
There did not have to be a world on one side and another world on the other.
The distinction itself could come first.
And once it did, two sides became possible.
Then relations became possible.
Then sequences.
Then events.
Then objects.
Then histories.
Then beginnings.
The traveller felt a strange vertigo.
“If possibility depends upon distinction,” he said slowly, “then possibility itself cannot simply be assumed.”
“No.”
“It too must have conditions.”
“Yes.”
“Then even possibility has a beginning.”
The voice was quiet.
“Careful.”
The traveller stopped.
“Why?”
“You are about to make the old mistake.”
He thought about it.
“Because I am imagining possibility having an earlier state.”
“Yes.”
“And that would require time.”
“Yes.”
“So perhaps I should not ask when possibility began.”
“No.”
The traveller looked at the doorway.
“Then what should I ask?”
The voice answered:
“Ask when possibility became possible.”
The traveller stood silently.
The question seemed absurd.
And yet it was not.
He had begun by searching for the first thing.
Then he had searched for what came before it.
Then for what caused it.
Then for what surrounded it.
Then for what it differed from.
Now he had arrived somewhere stranger.
At the point where the very idea of something being possible could no longer be taken for granted.
He placed his hand on the edge of the doorway.
“What is on the other side?”
The voice answered:
“Possibility.”
“And on this side?”
“Possibility.”
The traveller laughed.
“Then what does the doorway divide?”
The voice replied:
“Possibility from itself.”
The traveller withdrew his hand.
The doorway was gone.
So was the wall.
There was no longer an inside.
No outside.
No here.
No there.
Only the traveller standing in a world that had somehow become full of distinctions.
He looked at his hands.
One hand was not the other.
The sky was not the ground.
A sound was not silence.
This moment was not that moment.
And everywhere he looked, possibility seemed to be unfolding through difference.
He finally understood what the earlier questions had been trying to reach.
The beginning might not be where something first appeared.
It might be where difference first made appearance possible.
And if that was true, then there was one question still waiting beyond the doorway.
Not:
What was first?
Not:
What came before?
Not:
What caused it?
Not even:
What made a difference possible?
But something stranger.
The traveller looked into the distance.
And whispered:
What makes possibility itself possible?
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