Impossible

The origin story of this is so stupid I really don't want to get into it. :p

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Transcript

‘Nother little black shape just flitted by my window. It’s their feeding time. Unfortunately I’ve got nothing to give them this night. Been a bit too busy on other things, as I’m sure you understand. Reminds me of the phrase for whatever reason has been skimming about my head, sort of like those bugs that ski on the surface of water. Barely disturbing my thoughts, not really touching them. Bit of an odd way to look at it.

“Nothing is impossible. Even the word itself says I’m possible.” It’s a little thing they taught me back in elementary school, and I took it to heart, then. Used to think I could join the flock of bats outside, flit through the night sky as long as I wanted, just if I yearned for it long enough, willed for it enough, that somehow, someway I’d just turn into one and be free in that regard. ‘Course that’s not how things worked, but the pessimism that has been drowning me for most of my life, especially much of the last couple of weeks, has melted away from my mind like a glacier breaking off of an ice cap. Slowly, gently, turning back into normal, good water. 

I’m mixing my metaphors and similes too much, but, hey, I’m tired. Really really tired. You would be too if you were in my position. Only I know how much I need sleep. Well, yeah.

Even the word itself says I’m possible. 

‘Bout fifteen days ago was when they started striking our planet. When the news hit me of all the people over in Abstan getting crushed to smithereens, riots breaking out all over the place, I thought of it somehow as something of good. Like, not on the surface, I mean. Like with most people who have kept whatever level of sanity we would like to call sanity within this world, outwardly I bemoaned all of it. I cried about how my normal life would be stripped away from me, by all of the raging violence associated with the ascendancy of this mad idiot god. But, hey. Deep down inside I knew that I… I looked upon this news, upon the damnation of this world as some sort of actual good turn of events.

 And, now at this point, although I was the one in that mind, dictating all of those black thoughts, it’s hard for me to look back on it and actually understand what was happening in my mind. ‘Cause the bombs were falling, sounds were splitting my ears, splitting everything in two. Just an absolute random of chance of whether you would die in the next second or not. A lottery of absolute morbid proportions. And even though I screamed outside, even though I shuddered, even though my instincts bucked against this madness descended from the heavens, part of my mind enjoyed that introduction of lethality into a life that had been muddled in the gutters for so long. That had looked upon that phrase of impossibility and simply given up. Thought that since small chances were no chances at all, that there was only a life to be had in playing it safe.

Okay. I better actually get into what’s getting me excited. The bombing’s stopped. And it’s not stopped because whatever this lady is is gone. I mean, she’s probably still there. But the ship’s gone. The ship is gone. Smashed straight into the crust of the planet with a big boooom. And you want to know what caused that? That was me. Me. I know. It’s crazy to think about it. The war’s still raging outside as all these slack jawed people go round and round yelling about how much bliss they’re having. And I honestly believe them, too. And that’s the weird part. I believe these people who have lost their mind to the, to the thing. I wouldn’t call her a lady at this point. The thing. The thing that’s decided to reclaim something or another that it never had. Obviously. Stupid. Unfounded in fact and reason, and logic, and history… all of it completely unfounded in the mind, the mind that we like to look at and not the part of the mind that we like to ignore and hide behind a past that we simply forget. A joy of life that we simply forget. 

So those fanatics out there, I think that maybe this one breaking of their soul is their one chance. Chance they got to remember. ‘Cept in their case, their chance was a grand bit more lethal than mine. Which, also sounds a bit absurd, considering my chance has directly, or indirectly, resulted in mass fire. But, I think I get it, a little bit. A little bit. There’s something about us, about maturation that makes us accept a sense of powerlessness about ourselves. About seeing those little chances that we take failing over and over and over again, more often than not simply because of the mathematical reality of it. But it is true, that simple stupid saying that I felt was a water skimmer drifting over my head, causing me to look at my pessimism as though it was something that was bad, because it was, it was in a large way bad. But I didn’t listen to the water skimmer, no. 

In reality, as any rational person of a full mind, both that logical part that our civilization celebrated and the part that it didn’t… a person who knows a little bit of both of that… that person understands that literally everything is possible, it’s just that the chances vary. If I could wait long enough I could see it all happen. I would see myself turn into a bat, and finally, in that way, be free. And then the adult logic par of my brain chimes in to ask how long would that take? How long? How long? And the child just wanted to shut it up. Didn’t want to listen to that, to accept the amount of time. So, in shutting it down instead of listening to it in any portion, it just refused. And so, because I was relatively powerless, relegated to a backwater technician job on this planet, I… I let it corrupt itself, per se. Let it as time as hardship swept over me, let that innocence of hope sink into the shadows of the mind.

And you see all the people out there screaming. You know, the ones who don’t have that twinkle about their eye, who are something more, something less. I dunno what you want to call them. Brainwashed… brainwashed is not the right term. But those people, I can understand them a little. Because in her they found a little bit of conjunction between the two parts of their mind, whatever part they embraced and whatever part they cast down to the shadow. But her herself, she gives me every impression of something, someone, that little kid who, when told that nothing was impossible, dreampt of being that bat and actually, by some twist of fate hit that crazy small chance, just then and there. Without having the forces, the courses of time to mellow her out, damage her imagination. To her, it simply was. Then and there. The consequences of withholding all of her might, of flying for days upon days upon days without attending to her chores, her homework, anything like that…

For whatever reason, whether it be the mathematics of chaos or some other thing I couldn’t describe for you, she just never got to feeling the consequences for that. And so it was only natural for her to forget how relatively small she was, to always grow those chances into things that were bigger. And, of course, there’s good bit of that out there for her, for all those people out there. This aggrandizement of hope into something which is all… it can be happy, for a while. They’re happy now. 

I dunno what I’m saying. I barely understood what I was doing when I hacked the relays. And, that probably would’ve just killed me. I understood that in the moment, even though my mind was muddled with adrenaline. Even as I talk about my pessimism, whenever I leapt in there and actually jammed it somehow, hitting the reactor core so that it rebounded upon itself… I didn’t know what I was doing. IT wasn’t like I was really trying to die, because I felt like that was a certainty at that point. The mathematics of fate had turned against me, to not only shackle me to death but to free me from life. And that was just a certainty, that was what was going to happen. So, you know, I was here, waiting it out, and I figured, I don’t know why… that I could actually do something. ‘Cause I heard from the slackjawed people, that this was what the relay was for. I dunno why they didn’t attack me. Maybe they didn’t think that I was a threat. Or maybe they thought I was one of them, somehow. But there were a lot of sparks, and my hands are badly singed… oh, don’t worry. I was wearing gloves. I’m not that stupid. But, when the wires hit… it was too hot for even the thermal insulation, melted a bit. It’s going to be a while before anything gets in working order. 

But, in some odd way, that one chance I took when I felt like there were no chances, like that chance I was taking wasn’t a chance at all… but just the reverberation of molecules, atoms, quarks against themselves. Nothing but forces. That chance that was no chance… it saved everything.

The other people, they’re not going to see it that way. I understand that. Even if they accept a little bit of my account of events, if they find some security footage that shows me doing what I say that I did, they’ll see me as a hero. But I’m not a hero, not really. Just a good accident of fate. A good accident that opened my eyes a little bit. And now I’m just watching the window, watching them flit by for their feeding time. I wish I could go outside right now and gather some stuff for them to eat, but, hey, at present my hands are too bad to even open the door without bruising them. So, in a sense I’m in the same way that I was before, just with a bit more time. And again, there’s that pessimistic thought that there really are impossible things pressing against my head. That even in shattering so many things, in making the future clear for so many things, that even then, even with that change in realization, that I haven’t really swapped anything in my path of fate. Which, I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t think it matters anymore.

So, maybe they get another ship back up, which is really unlikely. This sector… they always looked at us as a bit backward. But, hey we’re here, it’s just that we didn’t have a strong aerospace program. If we did, I’d have signed up, probably, then, I don’t know. Past me would have thought that such would lead to a better course in my life, but present me understands that even if those eight years down here were a bit of a dull gray hell, that just this last couple of days, this realization was worth it. Worth all of it. 

Maybe they get another ship up, maybe some lunatic barges into my room and brands me with their stupid, slackjawed stare. Kills me, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe nothing happens. Maybe with the ship down she turns her stare away from this place, the authorities are able to reclaim a bit of stuff, get civilization up and running again. Maybe then they do find what I’ve done and make me a little bit of a celebrity. An undeserved celebrity, certainly, but celebrity nonetheless. Maybe. 

Is there really any true heroism in taking these chances when you don’t even see them as a chance? Now, with the benefit of my better senses, my better memory, I can look at the past and I can say that if I did it again today, then I truly would ahve been a hero for snatching the strings of destiny at just the right moment. 

I suppose at the end of the day, all that I’ve learned from this was that my elementary school teacher was a lot wiser than I thought.