Tales from the Universe
Every person born in Saint Mercy may ask the well one question.
Once.
Not once a year.
Not once per visit.
Once in a lifetime.
The answer will be true.
That is why parents spend so much time teaching their children not to ask anything stupid.
The well stands in the center of town.
Grey stone.
Iron roof.
No bucket.
No rope.
A brass plaque reads:
ASK CAREFULLY.
Tourists think it is decorative.
People from Saint Mercy know better.
On a child’s seventh birthday, they are taught the rules.
One question.
Asked aloud.
The well answers immediately.
The answer is true.
Nobody knows how.
Nobody knows who built it.
Nobody knows what happens if you ask twice.
And according to thirteen-year-old Mira Orison’s father, those are all excellent examples of questions you should absolutely not waste your question asking.
Mira has been saving hers for six years.
She intends to save it much longer.
Possibly forever.
Her best friend, Daniel Bell, used his at eight.
He asked:
“Will I ever have a dog?”
The well answered:
YES.
His parents were furious.
Daniel considers this unfair because two years later they adopted Pickle, proving the question was successful.
“You could have asked anything,” Mira tells him.
“I wanted a dog.”
“You could have asked how to cure cancer.”
“I was eight.”
“You could have asked whether aliens exist.”
“I wanted a dog.”
“You could have asked what happens after death.”
Daniel scratches Pickle behind the ears.
“I feel pretty good about my choice.”
Mira does not.
One perfect answer.
How could anyone spend it on something small?
Saint Mercy has entire professions devoted to the well.
Not officially.
There are question counselors.
Philosophers.
Lawyers.
Scientists.
People who help wealthy families construct questions.
A badly phrased question can produce a useless answer.
A man once asked:
“Will my business succeed?”
The well said:
YES.
His business succeeded.
For three months.
Then failed.
A woman asked:
“Will I marry Thomas?”
YES.
She did.
They divorced eleven months later.
A scientist asked:
“Is my theory correct?”
NO.
He spent the next twenty years trying to determine which part.
The well does not explain.
It answers what you ask.
Nothing more.
Mira’s grandmother has not used her question.
She is eighty-two.
This astonishes Mira.
“You’ve had seventy-five years.”
“I noticed.”
“What are you saving it for?”
“I don’t know.”
“What if you die without asking?”
“Then I die with a question left.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
Grandma Orison smiles.
“Less than asking the wrong one.”
Mira understands this perfectly.
Perhaps too perfectly.
At school, everyone knows who has used theirs.
Children compare questions.
Some brag.
Some regret them.
One boy asked whether a girl liked him.
NO.
He transferred schools.
Another asked whether he would become famous.
YES.
Nobody knows for what.
A girl named Lena asked:
“Am I a good person?”
The well answered:
SOMETIMES.
For months, everyone laughed about it.
Mira didn’t.
She thought it might be one of the best answers the well had ever given.
Then Mira’s mother becomes ill.
Not dying.
At least nobody says dying.
Adults use phrases like:
more tests
and
waiting for results
and
let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Mira immediately knows what her question should be.
Will my mother be okay?
She walks to the well.
Stops.
If the answer is yes, good.
If the answer is no—
what then?
She goes home.
The next morning she tries again.
Same problem.
On the third day she writes alternatives.
Will my mother recover?
What treatment will save my mother?
What should the doctors do?
What can I do to help my mother?
Every question contains holes.
Recover when?
Save her for how long?
Which doctors?
Help how?
The more Mira thinks, the less safe language becomes.
Her father hires a question counselor.
Mr. Wren.
He carries a leather folder containing hundreds of documented questions.
His job is to remove ambiguity.
“Never ask about general outcomes,” he explains.
“Specify conditions.”
He helps Mira construct:
What currently available medical intervention, if any, gives Elena Orison the greatest probability of surviving her present illness for at least twenty additional years without reducing her expected quality of life below—
Mira stops him.
“I can’t even remember the question.”
“You don’t have to. We write it down.”
“What if something better is invented next year?”
Mr. Wren pauses.
“We can account for that.”
“What if the treatment that gives her twenty years prevents one that would give her thirty?”
“We can revise.”
“What does quality of life mean?”
“We define it.”
“Whose definition?”
Mr. Wren closes the folder.
He looks tired.
“You see the difficulty.”
“Yes.”
That is the problem.
Mira sees all the difficulties.
Meanwhile her mother continues receiving ordinary medical care.
Doctors investigate.
Tests return.
Treatment begins.
Nobody knows what will happen.
Mira hates this.
There is a well five blocks away containing certainty.
Every morning, people walk past it carrying groceries.
Children play around it.
Birds sit on its roof.
And Mira’s family waits for laboratory results.
It feels absurd.
Then someone else asks about her mother.
Mira learns because Daniel runs to her house.
“Mira.”
He can barely breathe.
“Someone used their question.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Vale.”
Mr. Vale teaches chemistry.
His wife is being treated at the same hospital.
He asked:
Will everyone currently receiving treatment in the east oncology ward survive this year?
The well answered:
NO.
Mira’s mother is in the east oncology ward.
So are twenty-six other people.
The answer tells them something.
And almost nothing.
Someone will die.
Maybe several people.
Nobody knows who.
The entire town changes.
Families panic.
One patient transfers hospitals.
Two stop treatment.
Another demands surgery.
Someone begins planning a funeral.
Doctors beg people to ignore the answer.
“How do you ignore something you know is true?” Mira asks.
Nobody has a good answer.
Three months pass.
Nobody dies.
Four.
Five.
Mr. Vale’s wife improves.
Mira’s mother improves too.
By autumn, she is home.
Mira begins believing the well must have meant someone else.
She hates herself slightly for the relief she feels whenever another patient looks worse.
That realization frightens her.
The well has transformed twenty-seven sick people into a terrible equation.
One of us.
Not me.
Please not me.
Certainty did not remove fear.
It gave fear a target and then refused to identify it.
In November, an elderly patient named Mr. Clay dies.
Heart attack.
Not cancer.
He was still technically receiving follow-up treatment through the east ward.
The prediction is fulfilled.
Everyone relaxes.
Mira becomes furious.
“That was it?”
Daniel shrugs.
“The well was right.”
“It told us almost nothing.”
“It answered the question.”
“Exactly.”
She finally understands something about the well.
It does not give wisdom.
It gives answers.
Those are not the same thing.
Her mother recovers.
Not completely.
But enough.
She returns to work.
Her hair grows back.
Life slowly stops organizing itself around appointments.
Mira never uses her question.
Years pass.
She becomes known for this.
At eighteen:
“You still have yours?”
At twenty-five:
“What are you waiting for?”
At thirty:
“Don’t you want to know something?”
Of course she does.
She wants to know thousands of things.
That is precisely why choosing one remains difficult.
Eventually Mira becomes a question counselor.
Daniel finds this hilarious.
“You spent your entire childhood refusing to ask one.”
“Excellent qualification.”
Her approach is different from Mr. Wren’s.
She still helps people make questions precise.
But before touching the wording, she asks:
“What will you do with the answer?”
Most people have not considered this.
A businessman wants to know whether an investment will succeed.
“What will you do if it says no?”
“Not invest.”
“What if it says yes?”
“Invest.”
“So you’re asking the well to make the decision?”
He becomes uncomfortable.
A woman wants to know whether her husband loves her.
“What happens if the answer is no?”
“I leave.”
“What happens if it’s yes?”
“I stay.”
“Are those actually the only things you need to know?”
Sometimes people leave without asking.
Mira considers those consultations successful too.
Then, when Mira is forty-six, her daughter comes to her.
Sofia is seventeen.
She still has her question.
She has been accepted into two schools.
One nearby.
One across the country.
She holds a carefully written sentence.
“I want to ask which one will make me happier.”
Mira reads it.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
Sofia frowns.
“How is that good?”
“Because sometimes that’s the honest state of the information.”
“I could know.”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t that be better?”
“Maybe.”
Sofia looks toward the well.
“What would you ask?”
Mira smiles.
“I still don’t know.”
“You’re forty-six.”
“I’ve had practice.”
They sit beside the well.
Sofia talks.
What she wants.
What she fears.
What she would lose.
What she might gain.
After an hour, she folds the question and puts it back in her pocket.
She chooses the school across the country.
Not because she knows it will make her happier.
Because she wants to go.
Mira is seventy-nine when she finally walks to the well alone.
Her mother is long gone.
Her father too.
Daniel lives three streets away and still owns dogs.
Four of them.
Mira has children.
Grandchildren.
Mistakes.
Regrets.
Things she is proud of.
Things she still does not understand.
Her question remains unused.
She places both hands on the stone.
For seventy-two years she has treated this moment as though one question must somehow justify all the others she did not ask.
Now that seems funny.
She leans over the darkness.
“Was my life good?”
The well is silent.
Mira waits.
Nothing.
Then she laughs.
Of course.
She has asked a question with half the important words undefined.
Good according to whom?
Measured how?
Compared to what?
Mr. Wren would be horrified.
Mira waits anyway.
For the first time in the recorded history of Saint Mercy, the well takes almost a minute to answer.
Finally, from somewhere far below:
YOU WERE THERE.
Mira closes her eyes.
“That isn’t an answer.”
The well says nothing else.
She has used her question.
One lifetime.
One guaranteed truth.
You were there.
On the walk home, Mira thinks it may have answered perfectly.
Or badly.
Or perhaps she still does not understand what she asked.
She cannot ask again.
That is all right.
For most of her life, Mira believed uncertainty was the distance between herself and the answer.
Eventually she learned that sometimes uncertainty is simply part of standing close enough to reality to see how large it is.
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