English is a ridiculous language,” Nella said. It was an afternoon a few months after she and Clem had met. “Like infinite and infinitesimal. One means huge and the other means microscopic. How can that be?”
Clem, doodling in a sketchbook, shrugged.
“What are words, anyway?” Nella went on. “If you listen to a language you don’t know, it’s pure gibberish. Just vowels and consonants arranged in senseless, random ways. The only reason it makes sense is because people decide it does. Otherwise it’s just noise!”
Clem sat up, interested now. “Like time,” she said. “Like how we keep trying to measure it and calculate it, when it’s the most slippery, mysterious thing that exists.”
“You know what else makes no sense?” Nella was on a roll. “God having no beginning and no end. I get the no ending—that’s what heaven is. But it’s impossible to have no beginning.”
“That one’s easy.” Clem’s pencil traced a circle in the air. “Think of a toy train track that goes round and round so you can’t tell where it starts and where it ends.”
“God is not a toy train track!”
“Chill!” Clem grinned. “I’m not insulting God!”
Where did Nella’s questions come from? Did everyone have this voice inside, asking questions? But people were so different. It couldn’t be the same voice. Everyone’s must be programmed differently, like the GPS voice. But where did it come from? Whose voice was it, really, popping up when you didn’t expect, causing trouble and confusion? Coming from you but not being you?
More questions. Questions about questions. It was hopeless.