The Eavesdropper
After Brian died, Paula inherited the world. She did not know that she had inherited the world, but there could be little doubt but that she had, for she was the only person left of note.
Brian made bicycles. He had a taste for adventure and change, and liked the pace at which those came upon a bicycle. Reliable and slow. Paula made boxes, for she liked to contain things.
Upon her inheritance, Paula created a box in which to collect the world. It was a funny box that liked only names, but it was enough. To collect the pieces of the world, the non-playable characters that surrounded her, the beauty, art, and music that formed the background of her world, she needed only to name them, and they would gather inside her magic box.
At first, she collected the world directly. She would travel and meet the so-called people, gather enough information about them to contain them inside her box. Though she did not own a television, she loved live music and theatre. She would attend performances, gathering the names of musicians and actors who performed for her, the people sitting near her, others she met along the way. Each time she learned a name, she gathered it into her box.
In time, however, and as she aged, the burden of this work became too difficult, and she looked to make the gathering of her inheritance more efficient. She found that she could collect someone without even knowing their name, if only they knew a name she had already collected. In this way, she could gather more people more quickly, and with less effort.
If a person told her they had been to a place she had been, she collected them.
If a person told her they knew of a person she had previously collected, she collected them.
If a person told her they knew of music or a play she was familiar with, she collected them.
And so, in this way, she proceeded to gather her inheritance into her magic box.
Even this, however, was a difficult task, for it takes time to determine whether one holds a name of value. One must ask questions, listen for long periods of time before one learns if a person is available to be collected. Yet, she persevered. She made her way into rooms where people talked. She listened to conversations, eavesdropped upon the world, allowed each word to make its way into her mind without context, looking always and only for the keys to unlock them.
Now the life of an eavesdropper is a strange one. It is easy enough to listen in a quiet room, but as it gets more crowded or noisy, one must either sacrifice some level of understanding, or join the conversation properly, waiting for a pause perhaps, an invitation, some sign that one has been welcomed. As Paula was the only person in the world of note however, and as the world, moreover, already belonged to her as a result of her inheritance, she simply inserted herself into conversations without care.
If she thought she heard a name, a place, a time that might allow her to collect someone, she would simply interrupt whatever unimportant conversation she was listening to, that she might get clarification for the sake of her box. True, the conversations would then come to a halt, but that mattered not to Paula. What those of no note discussed was as unimportant as the white noise of the television she did not own. If she could gather someone, there was little point in wasting further time. Though the conversationalists generally did not suspect that she was listening, rarely even noticed her presence prior to the interruption, she would stop their conversation regardless and proceed to gather them by getting them to speak whatever name she needed to hear. Whether the conversation continued at that point was of no import to Paula. She cared only for her inheritance.
From time to time, she would take pity on these unnotable players, and share the few names outside of her box, those to which she could claim undisputable ownership. She might speak of Brian and his bicycles, or of some place from her travels. Tell her origin story on a repeating loop. Along the way, she continued to gather names and places that might reasonably connect to the person in her vicinity, thereby collecting them into her box before moving onto the next.
In this way, Paula moved through the world while standing in place, gathering her inheritance piece by piece into her magic box, until the day came, as it does for all, that she passed from this world to the next.
With no one for the inheritance to fall to, the magic box sat upon a shelf among her many other boxes and collected the dust of a world that belonged to no one.