A Hole Within a Hole. By Carlos del Puente

In a forgotten corner of the universe, where shadows dance to the tune of inaudible melodies, there existed a hole. It was no ordinary hole, but one made of whispers and lost echoes, a door to the impossible. Around it floated impossible-colored flying fish debating the meaning of life while lounging in cloud-shaped armchairs.

One day, a top hat decided it was time to explore the hole. It slid into its depths, where gravity behaved like a mischievous child, tugging at objects in opposite directions. In this strange space, the hat encountered a clock running backward, marking the hours of a time that had never existed. "Why are the minutes rushing when they no longer have a hurry?" asked the hat, but the clock merely winked and darted off in a three-legged race with a porcelain cat.

As it continued its journey, the hat stumbled upon a second hole, smaller and glowing a phosphorescent green. It was a hole within a hole. Peering inside, it saw what seemed to be an alternate world where flowers sang operas and clouds wept candies. Intrigued, it decided to leap in.

Suddenly, it found itself in a garden where the trees were actually pianists playing sonatas while their roots wove stories into the ground. A chocolate fish approached and offered a cup of coffee that never cooled. "Here, time makes no sense," said the fish in a baritone voice. "You can be whatever you want: a hat, a clock, or even a hole within a hole."

Excited by the possibilities, the hat transformed into a crystal snail dragging its house of light through the garden. As it moved, the holes began to multiply, as if playing hide and seek. Each one led to a stranger place than the last: a desert of melting clocks, an ocean of ink, and a sky filled with firebirds.

Finally, the hat stopped before a hole that looked like a mirror. When it gazed into it, it saw not only its reflection but also an infinity of hats, clocks, fish, and holes, all intertwined in a cosmic dance of madness. It understood that each hole was a fragment of its own existence, and that in the end, we are all a hole within a hole, perhaps searching for a meaning that is never found.

With a smile expanding like the horizon, the hat decided to return to the first hole, taking with it a piece of the garden and a melody from the flowers. Thus, the hole within the hole became a portal, a reminder that the absurd is perhaps the only truth that remains.

The hat, now a bit more frayed from its interdimensional adventures, returned to the first hole, but something had changed. The hole, once a simple abyss of whispers, now pulsed with a dim, almost imperceptible light. The flying fish, once so loquacious, had fallen silent, observing the hat with a mix of curiosity and sorrow. The cloud-shaped armchair where they used to rest was now in tatters, its fibers floating like snowflakes in an invisible current.

As the hat approached, it felt a strange vibration, as if the hole itself were breathing. Peering inside, it saw that instead of the expected void, an infinite landscape of holes stretched out before it, each one smaller than the last, a fractal regression into nothingness. It was a Matryoshka of holes, an infinite succession of empty spaces nested within each other.

Suddenly, a whisper, as soft as the brush of butterfly wings, reached its ears. It was the voice of the hole, or perhaps, the voice of all holes. "We have lost the thread," whispered the voice, "We have forgotten the question."

Confused, the hat asked, "What question?"

The voice replied, "What lies beyond nothingness?"

At that moment, all the holes began to contract, imploding upon themselves, creating a blinding light that consumed the hat and the landscape of infinite holes. The light faded, leaving behind an absolute silence, a perfect void. However, at the center of that void, imperceptibly, a new hole began to form, a barely audible whisper, an unanswered question, the beginning of a new and absurd adventure. A hole within a hole, within a hole… and so on to infinity. And the cycle would inevitably begin anew.

The silence, however, was deceptive. From nothingness, or perhaps from everything, a scream emerged. Not a human scream, but a scream woven with the texture of silk and the scent of acid rain. The scream resonated in nonexistence, creating waves that spread through the void, drawing ephemeral constellations of stardust and particles of uncertainty. From these constellations, like buds of a cosmic flower, impossible objects began to emerge: a spherical cube singing opera, a teapot giving birth to hourglasses, and an army of sock puppets marching to the rhythm of an inaudible melody.

The new hole, which had emerged from the silence, began to grow, not outward, but inward, absorbing the cacophony of impossible objects. Within it, a perpetual dance of paradoxes could be glimpsed: a cat chasing itself, a tree dissolving into rain, and an infinite number of top hats arguing the existence of nothingness.

Suddenly, from the interior of the hole, a hand emerged. Not just any hand, but a hand made of Gruyère cheese, with fingers crumbling into crumbs. The hand extended a piece of cheese into the void, offering a bite of the reality that was being reconstructed. The cheese, when bitten by an invisible force, revealed a new hole, even smaller, within it.

And so, the absurd narrative continued, an infinite chain of holes within holes, a universe generated by impossibility itself. The initial scream echoed again, a reverberation resonating in infinity, a constant reminder that the question, "What lies beyond nothingness?" remained unanswered, and perhaps, the answer was not found in seeking an answer but in accepting the perpetual absurdity of the universe. A hole within a hole, an endless cycle, an eternal dance of nothingness and everything, a Gruyère cheese containing all possible universes, and none at the same time. And the hat? Well, the hat had transformed into a musical note, lost in the symphony of chaos.

The musical note, once a hat, now floated in a sea of warm milk, sailing on waves of silence punctuated by the occasional groan of a forlorn teapot. The milk, surprisingly, tasted of forgotten memories and unfulfilled promises. Around it, the sock puppets continued their relentless march, a silent army advancing toward a nonexistent horizon. Occasionally, one would detach from the group, dissolve into a sigh of stardust, and reappear as a small planet inhabited by monkeys playing the trombone.

From the milky depths, a creature composed of intertwined hourglasses emerged. Each hourglass marked a different time, some advancing, others retreating, some simply stopping at random moments. The creature, with a voice reminiscent of reverse waterfalls, said to the musical note, "The answer is not in the holes, but in the space between them."

Intrigued, the musical note tried to decipher the meaning of this enigmatic phrase. It looked around, observing the emptiness between waves of milk, the space between marching socks, the silence between the teapots' groans. And then, it saw it. In the space between each element, in the nothingness that seemed to separate the impossible, there were glimmers of pure light, a vibrant energy pulsing with an unknown rhythm.

That energy, that light, was the true answer. Not a logical or rational answer, but an experience, a sensation. It was the music of the universe, a melody composed of silence, absurdity, and impossibility itself. The musical note, finally understanding, joined that melody, becoming an integral part of the cosmic symphony. The holes, the milk, the socks, the teapots, were all simply notes in an infinite score, a chaotic and beautiful poem written in the language of the absurd, a universe constantly redefining itself in a perpetual dance between nothingness and everything, between silence and scream, between one hole and another hole, infinitely. The end? No, just the beginning of a new and eternal improvisation.

The cosmic symphony, however, was not static. It expanded and contracted, fluctuating between moments of absolute silence and bursts of indescribable cacophony. The musical note, now an integral part of this universal composition, underwent constant transformations. One moment it was a shooting star, the next a grain of sand on a beach made of thoughts; then, a sigh of wind in a desert of melted candies.

In a moment of relative calm, between two waves of sound that resonated like the weeping of a cosmic giant, the musical note encountered a being of pure geometry. It was a hyperdimensional cube, capable of containing infinite universes within itself. The cube, with a voice that sounded like the friction of ice crystals, explained: "Absurdity is not an absence of meaning, but an infinite multiplicity of simultaneous and incompatible meanings."

The musical note, attempting to process this statement, realized that each "hole within a hole" was not merely a spatial anomaly, but a metaphor for the infinite complexity of existence. Each void was a universe in itself, full of possibilities and contradictions, of logic and chaos in perfect harmony. The apparent lack of meaning was, in reality, a symphony of meanings, an incessant dance between the possible and the impossible.

Suddenly, the hyperdimensional cube began to crumble, not in a destructive process, but in a kind of fractal expansion. Each fragment that broke away became a new universe, each with its own holes, its own paradoxes, its own absurd symphonies. The musical note, a witness to this ongoing creation, understood that the universe had no origin or end, but a perpetuity of simultaneous beginnings and endings. It was an eternal becoming, a constant flow of possibilities, an endless game of hide and seek between nothingness and everything, in a symphony of absurdity where each note, each silence, each hole, was essential to the harmony of chaos. And so, the music of the universe continued, eternal and infinitely unpredictable.

By Carlos del Puente