Dai Stihó

Our lives — mine and yours (and in a way, his) are delineated by two sharp lines, two lines which cut neatly across the line of memories that I have.

I think it's the same for you, isn't it?

At first, there's only the one line, and it segments our lives into Before and After.

In a clinical sense, an objective sense, the psychologist in me notes how neat it is in the way that everything falls neatly to one side or the other. Before, we were two normal yuppies, in love, with a small house and good careers and all of the other things that a newly married couple at the ripe old age of twenty-eight can lay claim to.

I remember those times, occasionally, and wonder at how different we are now. The nights out, the clubs, the diners, the drinks, the music, the madness, the moments of freedom and of exploration. We were young and we really were living life beautifully, wonderfully.

There was that period in between, where we knew, but it's all so different on this side, isn't it?

Because even though we knew, it wasn't the After.

After came with him, and it came with diapers and screaming and milk and oh my god he's still sleeping right why is he so silent. After was also about freedom and exploration — but it was about his freedom, about his exploration of this bright shining world, where we are only observers.

It's worse than that, actually, because we couldn't stop him from getting hurt — not really — but we feel that hurt as keenly as he does, feel the pain as much as he does with his screams and cries. Every nick and gash and scraped knee is something that tears at me, even though I know he'll — we'll — get better.

I'm sure you feel it too.

I think the main difference between then and now was that we lived for ourselves Before, and life was one where we were beholden to each other, but nothing else. There was no future to think of, no activity that was truly too dangerous to consider.

But After, we were beholden to him, and all of those decisions we made suddenly had a new input. A crying, wailing, sobbing, smiling, laughing, bundle of sadness and hurt and and joy and happiness that overrode everything else we did.

And it changed us, and so suddenly, didn't it? We went from being at least somewhat irresponsible (more than somewhat, in my case) to wondering why no one else could be on time, from being those people that were up for every meeting of the friends to those who made apologies that we only sort of meant, because, well, the baby.

It focused us on what was important, I think. Not that our friends weren't important, but they didn't have the same experience yet.

Some of them do now — Jerry and Michelle as of last month — but we've gone beyond that now, haven't we? We were always first — first to marriage, first to After, and now first to...

It would be funny, almost, if it weren't so sad.

No, no, you're right, it won't ever be funny. I don't ever want them to follow in these footsteps. No parent should ever have to...

Now there's Before, After, and...

I don't even know what to call it.

After-After?

It's such a shitty name. It fits, if only because it's so wrong. It's the After that should never happen. The After that comes with the lack of focus, that comes with silently going through the day, wondering why you go through the day. It's the motions, and the dullness, and the grey.

It's the tears, sometimes, in the middle of the night, and in the middle of the day at my desk.

You know, in my mind's eye, I still see the moment, so clear, too clear, when the bus pulls out and—

Maybe it will be less clear, one day. Maybe it'll get duller.

Maybe.

He sits back in the overstuffed armchair and raises the cloudy glass vial to his nose, uncorking it and taking a deep breath.

Her footsteps are soft, but he strains his ears, not wanting to miss a single moment, a single piece of stimuli. He smiles, easily, as she leans down to wrap her arms around his neck, planting a soft kiss on his cheek. "Hi," he breathes out, inhaling her scent, and he's rewarded with a giggle, the same giggle he remembers so well.

He opens his eyes as she comes around the chair to curl up on his lap, one arm supporting her neck, the other pulling her in close, and their eyes meet. He simply sees, smells, feels her, and the minutes blur together as he exists purely in this moment, a moment that goes on and on.

Outside of his mind, though, time passes. One minute, then two, and then ten minutes later, a song begins to play — their song — and as the sound of the grand piano drifts through the house, he closes his eyes, knowing sight will be the first to go.

She seems to know it too, and slowly gets up, her fingers running over his arms, reaching up to cup his face as she plants another soft kiss on his lips, one that has never, in the hundred times that he's done this, gotten easier to bear.

"I love you." A whisper, and then an echo.

The song ends, and he's alone again, with just a vial in his hands. He turns it over, reading the inscription one more time, though he knows it by memory.

It's the only one he ever orders.

A quiet kiss goodnight

-

She waits until her husband is gone; he wouldn't want her doing this. She knows he's right, too; one day, she'll get the strength to stop.

But not today. She peeks out the lace curtains, watching as his car pulls away, and then checks all the doors meticulously — front, back, side, garage — to make sure they're locked. She sets the alarm to active, even though she's staying in the house, and then retreats to the bedroom.

For a moment, she sits on the bed, wondering if it's right, until she realizes that it doesn't matter, really. She goes to the drawer, moving her clothes aside, taking out the small flat, nondescript wooden box, and opens it. She ignores the diamond earrings and necklace, lifting up the jewelry section and seeing the true prize underneath:

Five vials, each one differently labeled.

Her long, thin fingers caress the glass and she thumbs over the labels, reading each in her mind over and over, until she chooses one: today, the second one from the right. She nods to herself, setting the jewelry back over her most prized possessions, and then sits back down on the bed.

She uncorks; she inhales.

She hears the pitter-patter of feet on the tile of the bathroom today. Sometimes it comes from under the desk that they have in the bedroom, sometimes from the walk-in closet. But today, she turns to face the bathroom, and there her baby boy is, five years old and exuberant and just done with going potty by himself and his face seems to say isn't she just so proud of him?

And she is, her heart filled with bursting, and she tries so hard not to cry, because if she does she won't see him as clearly, and instead she opens her arms and folds her darling dearest cherub into her arms.

This week has been hard, harder than normal, and she can't help but rock and sob and feel his little arms around her neck and listen as he asks, "Why are you sad, mommy? Can I kiss it better?" which only drives her to more tears.

Ten minutes pass, and eventually she is only holding herself, still sobbing, her face a wreck, when she hears the garage door open. This spurs her to action, and the empty vial is hidden under the pillow, the box replaced, the bedroom door unlocked, and she retreats to the bathroom to hide the tears and wash away the snot, and in fact does pretty well, she thinks.

She pulls herself together, even gives her husband a smile when he comes back. "Forget something?" she asks, and he nods. "Just some papers. Oh, and this—"

And he hugs her tight.

They've been married long enough that he knows, knows why she's a bit unsteady this morning, knows her secret. But he doesn't tell her it's unhealthy, doesn't repeat what the doctor said, because he can't bring himself to do so.

What she doesn't know is that he has a stash of vials as well. What she doesn't know is how many days of the week he doesn't go to work until he stops at the playground first, for ten minutes.

What she doesn't know is that some days, it's too much for him, too, and he comes back home instead of going to work because he needs to see her and be with her.

But today, he decides, there should be no more secrets between them, and he takes the empty vial out of his pocket, showing it to her.

"The first time at the playground," he says, simply.

She turns away for a moment, reaching under the pillow, and pulls her empty vial out, rolling it between her fingers and showing it to him.

"Potty training," she replies.

And they smile at each other, through the tears.

-

They sit together, a gathering of old octogenarians, not much longer for this world despite all the best efforts of medicine and technology. Many of them are invalid and failing in their mental faculties, and the overwhelming thing that visitors notice is the smell: a slightly sweet, slightly sterile one that hints of decay barely held back, one present in all such hospice facilities.

And yet, despite all this, there is an almost tangible feeling of hope in the room, one that comes from the doctor and the more lucid residents but also seems to permeate the mostly catatonic. The doctor checks the time, nods, and the nurses come in, each with a handful of vials to distribute.

They proceed through the tables, stopping at each wheelchair and making sure the name on the vial matches the elderly man or woman they stop next to, and give them the dose before moving on to the next one. The doctor makes a round, watching the residents' expressions closely, knowing that it would take ten minutes before she would learn anything, but impatient all the same.

The initial results are good to see — smiles, of course, because of the nature of memories which were chosen. Tears, from some, including some of the orderlies and nurses who had worked closely with the residents. One of the men who had stopped responding suddenly looked all around him, his eyes alert and taking in every detail. Another, an Alzheimer's patient who had forgotten most of her life, suddenly started reciting the names of her children and grandchildren — but that, of course, was from a memory given to her of their visits.

A minute passes, and then two, and then a quiet descends on the hospice staff. They wipe away their tears, stand ready, and wait. The doctor among them most of all, still pacing back and forth, watching, hoping.

At the nine minute mark, an audible sigh comes from some of the lucid ones who have experienced this before. They know it's coming to an end, but don't fight it, simply accepting it for the gift it is. Even though it's only for a few minutes, it's more than they could've hoped for, even five years ago.

At ten minutes, it ends, and some lift their arms, grasping for receding memories that they can not catch.

The doctor goes to work, kneeling besides each individual and asking them their names, what they just felt, and most of all, what they remember.

The first few remember nothing, not even what they just went through. Another remembers what had happened, but when asked for details, can offer none. And so it goes, through the group, and the doctor slowly confirms that the vial only gives a temporary, ephemeral activation of the hippocampus; nothing permanent. Never anything permanent.

The doctor tries not to react, but with each negative response, she slumps a little bit more, her questions a bit more rote.

Then she reaches the woman with Alzheimer's, and dully asks the resident her name, ready to move on.

"My name...is Angela," the woman says, slowly. "And I remember... I remember my grandchildren."

Within three months, vials are being given for the memory related disorders with FDA approval and there are multiple papers on the topic, peer-reviewed, in Nature, in Science, in Psychology.

At the end of it, though, what the doctor remembers most isn't the Nobel prize announcement, or the NHS funding call. It's after she makes a phone call to Angela's children, and after they gather in the foyer.

It's when Angela sees her grandchildren again — and for the first time, it's not the first time.

---

Prompt explanation here.

Imagine, for a moment, being eight years old and watching your parents — your wise, loving, beautiful parents — defy death again and again and show you what the words skill and courage mean. This is at an age when they're still gods instead of men and women, where they can do no wrong and their word is absolute.

Imagine that this is just another night, mostly. The crowds are there, no more or less than usual, and everyone else does their act and manages to make it by without doing anything spectacularly terrible, though the lion tamer does get a bit testy with his whip and the performers (but not the audience) know that the lion's roar isn't completely for show. But the tamer makes it out of the ring to a smattering of applause, and everything's alright.

Now imagine being eight years old on this night, and sitting in a front row seat, watching your parents do a trick they had done a million times before, and watching as your mother goes up into the jump, flips and twists perfectly, and then comes down into your father's waiting arms.

And then the cable snaps.

-

What would you feel? Grief, sorrow, the world ending; you would cry and scream and jump over the barrier to your parents, beating the announcer, the owner, the paramedics to their bodies. You would freeze, then, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to fix this broken arrangement of body parts, these shattered pieces of your idols that you know, instinctively, that you can not — never — put back together.

So you simply scream, loud, piercing screams, on your knees in front of them, silent in the middle of the big tent, where hundreds of people watch, horrified, for what they came here to see. Not exactly, of course — they expected that the tricks would be pulled off more or less — but the main draw of the circus, of the juggling of flames and swallowing of swords and balancing of people, is in the chance of an accident. No one will admit to hoping for one, but everyone slows down at the scene of an accident and rubbernecks their way across, thanking God that they weren't the people involved.

Now they freeze; now they know they've drawn too close, and they find out that they didn't ever want to see what broken bodies look like, didn't want to know the intense queasiness that's caused by seeing arms which bend in the wrong direction and bones that stick out where they shouldn't.

But they can't look away, and all you feel are their eyes, their eyes all on you as your parents hold the audience spellbound for the last time ever.

-

But that's only half the story; it's the part that involves pain and tears and blacking out and being catatonic for the next few days.

There's another half, and it starts a few days before, when you're playing around the outskirts of the tents that are set up and you hear voices coming from near the back gate. Looters sometimes come through here, and you want to make sure that everything's fine, so you head that way, with the righteous knowledge that you are helping the circus speeding you along.

That is, until you come around a corner and see the owner of the circus, Uncle Zeppa you call him, cowering before two well-dressed men towering over him. One of them lashes out with a kick and drops Uncle Zeppa to the ground, clutching his stomach, and you almost, almost call out.

Almost.

But you don't, because you've learned, in your time at the circus, that saying things isn't always the best thing to do, so you say nothing. You just listen to the men, as they say that they want the Boss's money or something bad will happen, and the way they say Boss, you know that he is someone powerful.

But you don't say anything, you simply hide, and you think that you'll tell your parents about it. But by the time you get back to your trailer, you don't; they're practicing one of their acts, and it just isn't a big deal, and you'd create problems.

No one likes those who create problems, Uncle Zeppa says.

-

This is the other side of the story, the crushing, soul-destroying weight of guilt, the knowledge that you could've saved your parents, that you, you killed them, in a way. You could've done something, anything, and told someone, anyone, of what you had heard and seen. But now — now it's too late, now there's nothing you can do, and all you have left of your parents are the pictures and the memories and the dreams, and only the pictures aren't broken.

You change that, pretty quickly.

Now they're all broken.

Too bad it doesn't make anything better.

-

But there's one thing that saves you from despair and self-destruction, one path out of the twin chasms of grief and guilt that threaten to swallow you whole. You see, there's one other person in the world that knows what happened, one person that was there in the audience with you, one person who comes to you a week after and says that he knows.

He knows.

He's been following the gangsters' activities for some time, and he didn't catch that meeting and couldn't stop what happened but he has a plan for how to stop them and bring them down. He has a path out of the darkness, a single, winding, twisting path that you see as a single line, but you're pretty good at keeping your balance by now, aren't you?

What do you do? You join him, of course. You accept his offer to take you in — though not as a father, just as a legal guardian, and you accept that he has a plan for everything. Literally everything, you realize one day to your fascination, and as you keep poking around, you find out who he really is.

You know you've made it when you start going to sleep later and waking up later to keep track of him on his nightly journeys, when Alfred wakes you up in the morning with your usual breakfast, and when he finally, one day, calls on you to join him in his fight against crime.

"Robin," he says, "I need you with me."

And slowly, day by day, you keep your balance and don't fall into despair or self-hatred, and you make it out, until you're on solid ground again, or what feels like it. Day by day, you put on your mask and your costume and you roam the nights, fighting by his side, to avenge your parents, to avenge all the children in the world who have had their parents taken away from them. To prevent that from ever happening again.

It was my first time reporting in a wartime environment.

I was staring down at the orderly rows of protesters slowly winding their way up the street, waving signs that said “Let Us Be Free!” and “Our Voices Will Be Heard!”, from a balcony of the hotel, one that I thought would be deserted, given the demonstration going out on the streets. But then, a voice from my left.

“Disgusting, aren’t they?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to face the man. Average height, average build, black, curly hair, dark brown eyes, a red power tie. An unpleasant face is what caught me the most, with a mouth that looked like it hadn’t smiled in the thirty or so years he had been born.

“They are sheep to slaughter,” he answers. “And too stupid to realize it. Do you know what the difference between a riot and a demonstration is?”

I shrugged, not really interested in continuing the conversation; besides, the leaders of the protest were almost in contact with the police line.

“It isn’t, as commonly held, when someone throws a bottle, or a rock, or when the guns start firing. That’s just the illustration of the turning point, the start of the death toll. But it’s a riot before then. You can spot it by the attitudes that the two sides have. The rocks that protesters carry, the guns that the soldiers finger, even when they’re told to stand down. A riot happens the two sides hate each other, intensely, and want the other side to fail and to die.”

“There are plenty of Western sources of history where the people peacefully demonstrate an unpopular government, though,” I countered, watching as the shopkeepers started closing down their shops. It seemed unnecessary to me, as the march was still heading peacefully past these shops.

“And plenty more where a flower planted into the barrel of a gun was shot back, with lead, into the protesters’ faces,” he responds darkly, and I frown. “It’s the truth, and you’d best believe it. There, see — it begins.”

And I see a guy reach out, and throw a rock at a policeman. He is hit, and once the others see blood, they take it as an automatic order to stand ready, their guns — rubber bullets, the government said — pointed at the opposing line.

And for a moment, everyone pauses. The protesters, the soldiers, the bystanders. Everyone freezes, and watches, and waits.

“See? They’ll stand down now,” I say, hesitantly, hopefully.

And then he sneers, and the sound of firing — with live bullets — starts, and the screams of the dying, and I stare, transfixed, as the crowd begins to panic, some fighting back, some running away. I lean over the edge, and only as I feel his hand on my back do I realize that I shouldn’t have trusted him.

“Go, then,” he said, “join your sheep,” and I was falling.

There are only flashes of the riot, short clips I remember intensely, bright splashes of colour in the darkness. There is my landing, when I hit three, four people, and they all go down in a pile, and others start stepping over — stepping on — us, in their haste to get away, to run from the bullets, the advancing figures. I roll; I feel someone kick my back, harshly, and I do not know if it is someone under me or someone running away. I feel scrabbing on my face and I close my eyes to the gouging, feeling the nails, the claw of a hand trying to find something to grab on to, and finding nothing but my mouth. I almost bite down, almost, choking on his, her, someone’s fingers, but I wrench myself away, instead.

I remember being hauled up by two bystanders, a man and a woman, who make sure I’m on my feet before moving away, helping others, helping those fallen, even though they were in danger of being trampled themselves. And as I watch, one of them does go down, bowled over by a man running away, and then they are lost, swept away—

I cling to a pole in the crush and see a soldier firing into a man crawling away, hitting him in the back; I watch as the blood comes out of the neat hole in his back, and then, as he turns over, I see the gaping maw that was his stomach, and I vomit, down, into the crowd, into the street that is becoming slick with sweat and blood and urine and vomit.

And then I look up, and see as the man cries out for mercy, and I see the soldier raise his gun again, pointing at the man’s head, and another soldier knock the gun out of the way, calling for a medic, kneeling beside the man. The first soldier stands there for a second, and then takes off his helmet... and then falls, a bright mist coming out of the side of his head, as a pistol finds him, blowing his brains against the side of the street. And yet, the medic still keeps working, doing the best he can for the protester, even as gunfire continues around them, even as he starts bleeding from the ear, a direct hit from a rock that dazes but does not stop him—

I remember having a rock on my hand, and seeing a soldier on the ground, and seeing it bloody. He is knocked out, and there is a girl standing over him, a girl who has a rock in her hand as well, and she is hitting him with it, hitting him in the helmet. And then she kneels, and takes the helmet off, and raises the rock, and her saying, this is for my brother, you bastards—

I remember hauling the soldier upright, and dragging him towards his own lines, my hands empty, my face bloody. I remember snarling, snarling, as if I were an animal, at the protesters that came near. I remember the captain snapping his fingers, his uniform clean and pressed and as if he had just come from a parade, telling me to get out of his sight, that he could have me shot but he wouldn’t, because I had sided with the right people. I remember saying, sir, yes, sir—

And then going back into the fray, because what else could I have done? I had seen enough, perhaps, for a million stories, but there were still children bleeding out, fathers and sons and daughters and sisters that needed help.

The story could wait.


It’s hours later before I stumble back to my hotel, but I do manage to get there, battered, bloody. I stumble into my chair, curl up into a ball, and start shaking, trembling as the sobs come and don’t stop, as the images start replaying themselves across the inside of my eyelids.

And it’s there, an hour after I get back, that I open my laptop, that I start typing, knowing what my job was, knowing that I had to refute him, knowing that I had to tell the world. I remember the bystanders, the medic, the soldiers that would not take innocent lives, the protesters that just wanted to peacefully call for change.

And I write. I write my fucking heart out, take all the pain that I’ve just witnessed and try and put in all the hope that I’ve seen and I write to change the world.

Even in the darkest corners of the world, there is hope...

He walks alone on the ocean of sand, one foot shuffling before the other, the long trail snaking behind him, disappearing over the top of one dune only to reappear at the top of another, and another, until the eye can no longer see. But he does not look back: his path has only one element, forward, as the suns rise behind him and fall in front.

For him, there is only this: the grains of sand, a thousand beneath each foot, a billion in each dune, an infinite number before and an infinite more behind. There is no life in this truest of deserts, no movement but for his march, no sound but for the grains of sand shifting as he moves.

Each step is torturous, not for the heat that beats down upon his back, nor for the chafing of sand between his toes and his fingers, wedged there and in every other crevice in his body, but for the stars that he sees in front of him, and the wind that blows to stop his movement.

During the day, he sees a new vision with each step: the suns create shimmering mirages of galaxies and universes in the sand, each step a new sight. The stars themselves are beautiful, in their raging, burning light – but his punishment is to see more than just their fiery splendor. With each step, he sees the celebration of creation and life on their planets, from the tiniest cell to the most advanced civilization and every aspect in between. Organisms that start from one cell and become many, species that discover the use of tools, he sees the greatest of unifications and the most bitter of wars…and his tears create a second set of prints beside him.

Closing his eyes makes things worse; with his imagination, his mind creates more possibilities than he could ever see with his eyes open. So he continues his journey across the planet, his eyes never closed, seeing a multitude of worlds and crying for the loss of each one, and so many more.

The daytime, however, is his respite.

At night, when the moon is high, the starscapes are no longer of galaxies and universes, his visions no longer of grandiose achievements that epic legends are based upon. Instead, every step takes him to a scene on a world where he sees personal stories. A step, and he watches as a man tenderly makes love to his wife before going off to fight for their daughter’s future. A step, and he sees a son storm out of a house after an argument with his parents. A step, and he sees three friends in old age rest against one another, sharing comfort after the passing of a fourth. He sees emotions and actions which are universal, which do not matter whether the actors in them have claws or hands, two eyes or none at all.

He stopped for a moment, once, a million years ago.

He saw with his eyes, his heart, his soul, a million lifetimes of a million species that his carelessness destroyed, a million beings that could have been but were not. And then he ran - he sped, he broke the sound barrier, he covered a thousand miles in a single stride, and then he reached a point where he could not run any further. His force was not enough to break the laws of physics themselves.


It took him eons to slow his pace, but he has. Now he walks, one foot shuffling before the other, the long trail snaking behind him. Each century, his walk slows just a bit more. Perhaps one day, he will be able to stop and bear the visions without being destroyed by them.

That day, he hopes, he will be freed.

Three friends — a CIA officer, a Green Beret, and a army psychiatrist — are sitting by a campfire (or maybe they walk into a bar). They've been drinking a bit, and have reached the stage where they compare feats of bravado, and someone asks which of them is the best.

The CIA spook says, "I gather vital intelligence and do covert operations in some of the most oppressive nations on this planet. We have overturned governments, changed viewpoints, and given vital analysis on foreign abilities."

The Green Beret scoffs and says, "Yeah, well, we search for and eliminate terrorist leaders in hostile territory, behind enemy lines. We routinely get dropped into the most dangerous places on Earth, fight our way out, and make those sons-of-bitches quake in their boots."

The two look to the shrink, who looks perfectly placid. "Come now, doc, you have to have something to say."

He pauses for a moment, puts his fingertips together, and then looks at the others over the top of his glasses.

"I repair broken souls and find lost minds."
When I was younger, I was enrolled in a psychology fieldwork class; they gave us a choice of either working with abused/neglected children or hospice patients. We were undergraduates, and so there was no 'real' work to be done; both experiences were there to give us a taste of what the field would be like.

Working with the children would be an experience where we could really make a difference, I thought. We would be placed as Big Brothers/Big Sisters and take our charges a few times a week away from their home (often, a halfway home or a local youth shelter) to, say, a McDonalds or the park or a library, and simply spend some time with them and talk about anything they wanted to talk about. I had dreams — delusions, perhaps — of leading someone out of a nest of substance abuse issues or helping them climb from a pit of neglect by showing them that someone loved them, and hopefully help them grow into happy, amazing adults.

There was a boy in the program who originally wasn't going to go to college; he ended up studying clinical psychology, what his Big Brother did, because he wanted to pass on, to pay forward the gift that he had gotten. There was a girl who, six or so years after being in the program, named her first daughter after her Big Sister. Those were the changes we could accomplish.


Working with hospice patients and their families, on the other hand, was the other end of the spectrum; instead of the young, it was the old; instead of teaching and leading, we would be learning and following. We would meet with those who had lived three, four, five times as long as we had, once a week, and spend a few hours with them. It gave us a unique opportunity to ask them what mattered and what they regretted after half a century; it gave them a chance to reminisce about their younger years and pass on what they learned to those who would face similar issues, even if they weren't the exact same ones.

I saw a chance to ask questions about life and death, love and regrets; I believed we would be told grand stories of history as it happened instead of as it was written, and smaller, quieter stories of their own lives and choices. I thought that we would share, and in sharing, make both our lives better.


I, in my naivety, asked to do both.
In terms of complexity, there are few things that can even be compared to the human mind. The sheer number of independent parts, the interconnected nature of disparate processes, the precise chemical balances that are held to ensure everything goes right; it is a machine where the whole is tremendously greater than the sum of its parts, a machine that our best technologists have yet to approach the ability to create. Even with nanometer manufacturing processes and the exponential advance of science and technology, our only imitations are to create robots that look alive, without being alive. Perhaps we understand the problem better than our predecessors, but we are no closer to a solution, to being able to instill consciousness where God chose not to.I will always regret leaving him there. I stood up after our first meeting, in the office the size of a bathroom, shook his hand, and told him it was nice to meet him.

When the coordinator came in and asked when I'd be back next week, I said that Wednesday afternoons at 1pm would be just fine, thanks, even as I knew I would never be back. And I wasn't; I pushed the date off the first week claiming work, called out sick the second, and then stopped answering the calls.

I didn't have the courage to tell them I couldn't do it; I was young, you see, and full of cocksure arrogance, certain that I could change anything.

And when I saw that it was not so easy, I ran.

I'm sorry.
The mind is a marvel that the best of our neuroscientists and biologists and psychologists have yet to to understand. We comprehend cells, we predict the effect neurotransmitters, and we can elicit happiness or combat mood swings with application of electricity and pharmaceuticals. The most capable of us do amazing things with the same limited knowledge we all have, taking cases others think hopeless and coaxing the person back out of the shell; the clumsy fumble around making bad conditions worse, pushing those that could be saved over the edge. But for all that we have learned, the mind is as much of a black box to us today as it was to Freud or Skinner; our tools to decipher its secrets are shouts and explosives when we need whispers and scalpels. We grope around provoking 'stimuli' and measure 'responses', and all we know is that there is so much about ourselves we don't know.
Today John and I talk about our fears, everything from the small, irrational one that are implanted through small childhood experiences to the larger ones that guide how we act in life. He tells me that he's afraid of spiders, and we talk a bit about stingers and poison and movies and how many people die each year from spiders. We talk about adrenaline junkies and how they search out those things that are dangerous, and how that behavior can be good, in some forms, but it can also be dangerous if they live only for the rush of possibly dying.

It's been three months since I started working on him, and we're making progress, I think. He's opened up some, especially in these last two weeks, talking about events in his past that he's never raised before, and more than anything else, the way that he's been talking makes me wonder if there will be a breakthrough. He stops less often, bringing up topics himself; he trusts me now, perhaps — I haven't been pushing him at all this last month.

Even if there is a breakthrough, though, it's not like the movies, where all the problems are magically solved. The breakthrough is simply recognizing where deep seated issues, or habits, or destructive ideas rise from; it is only the first step on the long road to actually addressing them.

He's talking about the fear of being alone on holidays and then says about his childhood holidays, where his father wanted everything to be just right. It's an opening, a chance, and I take it — I ask him if it was all of the holidays or just some, in a sideways attempt at eliciting information without asking him bluntly and scaring him away.

He stops talking, though, and looks down. And this is what kills me — I know he's on the edge, teetering, wondering whether he should tell me, instinctively wanting not do, and I have no idea what to do. There's no book, no manual, no operating guide that says, in case of A, do B. There's no overall proclamation that all people will respond in a certain way to a certain gesture, and we are all, goddamnit, fumbling in the dark here.

He shakes his head, finally, after ten seconds, and I have known him long enough to read the expression on his face; I start in my experiences of being along on holidays, about being stuck at airports. I talk so there is no emptiness, so there's no pressure, but with enough of a lead that that if he wants, he can pick up on the topic.

He doesn't; today is not the day that he will talk about it, and in the coming weeks I will never be able to coax him to this using this topic again. It is the story of our relationship; with each bit of information I learn, I get a bit closer to understanding, but often at the cost of burning the bridge that gave me that insight on him.

I can only hope that I reach him before there are no bridges left.


Humans are capable of the most incredibly altruistic actions — and, of course, the absolutely depraved. In every generation, there are those  that, if given the opportunity, wouldn't hesitate to give everything to save the world, and those that wouldn't think twice before destroying it.

But what of the fact that there is no real predictor for events or occurrences that will cause people to be good — or go bad? There are certain 'orchid genes' which may cause certain children to be more fragile to certain stimuli that may negatively affect them, and there are many studies which state that children who grow up in broken families or in low income populations may effect destructive behavior when they grow up. But neither of these is a certainty; sadists have come from perfectly 'respectable', 'normal' childhoods, while some of the greatest humanists and saints were inspired by the incredibly cruel conditions of their youth.

And then there is this: not only can we as individuals be singularly inspiring or destructive, but we can be both, sometimes in the span of minutes. When a philanthropist kicks aside a beggar, even after he donates millions to starving children in Africa, when a war criminal goes out of his way to ensure that a certain horse farm is not bombed even as he calls for the destruction of cities; these are the complexities of humans that we do not understand, that we may never understand.I met Geraldine's husband first, a spry-looking not-yet-bald old man with all his teeth, wheeling himself away from the hospital room with his walker collapsed between his knees, acting for all the world like a five year old. I met her daughter second, chasing after her father with an exasperated smile, asking him where he thought he was going, exactly, and scolding him to slow down before he hurt himself.

Her daughter paused to tell me this was the room, that her mother was inside, and then smiled apologetically and went to chase down her eighty-year old dad, who was now doing spins in front of the nursing station.

"Hello, Geraldine, how are you feeling today?" I asked, taking a chair next to the hospital bed as I looked over at her. She turned in my direction but didn't smile back; that was my first hint.

"I'm going blind," she said, and the smile died from my face.

"I can't see anymore. I have kidney and stomach issues, and I can no longer walk. They've been wheeling me in and out, all day, doing tests, drawing blood. And all this, I wouldn't care about, if I weren't going blind."

"So how do you think my day was?"

I was silent for a moment, and then I said, honestly, "I've heard better."

But I couldn't stand the way the way she nodded, the silent, I thought so, and I added, "But I've also heard worse."

"Have you?" She asked, and it wasn't bitter, just a question. Was I lying?

"Yes, I have," I said, and that was the beginning of our talks.

She was seventy eight years old, born in February of 1932. Six months ago, her body started breaking down, and she had been admitted to the hospital multiple times since then.

Her hospital packet was thirty pages long, full of all the medications she took and ways that her body was shutting down on her. For me, it only had two pieces of useful information: first, that she been admitted with visual hallucinations,  and second, that she was getting cataract surgery.

"Do you think the cataract surgery will help?" I asked, starting somewhere I thought she would care.

For a second, I thought I had blew it; she was absolutely quiet, and I wondered if I had destroyed any chances of generating a rapport before it had even begun.

Then, quietly, she said, "They did a test on my eyes - there's a pigment or something they look for, and it's supposed to show up red. And it showed up red in one eye, but not the other. So, if I do the surgery, I should be able to get one eye back. That's worth it, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," I replied quietly. "After all, even if it's only one eye, you'll be able to see."

"I thought so," she replied, and I wondered why she had asked in the first place. Only later did I understand.

"How long has it been?" I asked her.

"About six months. Six months ago, I could see, I could feed myself, I could do almost everything by myself. I could move around, make food, everything. And now..." She held up a hand, gnarled like the bark of an old tree, veins clear, skin sunken, and moved her fingers. She had good movement, I said, surprised.

"But the physical therapy is so hard to get into, you know?" she asked, and it was impossible not to hear the note of defeat in her voice. The physical therapy for what, she probably wondered, the ability to have better fine motor control for how many more months, before she couldn't lift her arm anymore?

"That's why I'm going back to the nursing home; I never could bring myself to do it at home. I just slept at home, every day. I slept more than I ever had," she said, and I understood.

The first time we talked, we didn't speak of her hallucinations, or of the disease that was eating away at her mind; we simply talked about her and what being able to see again would meant. We spoke a bit about her daughter and her husband, and when I stood to leave, she asked me when I'd be back.

"Next week, this time," I said, and this time, I meant it.

In my years tending bar, I've found that there are a few reasons people will drink out, and they fall into some pretty distinct categories.

When people go to a lounge, they're there to dance, make friends, maybe get lucky for the night. The guy with way too much gel in his hair will buy something fruity for the girl and she'll giggle and flirt and maybe go home with him, if he's smooth and she's lookin'.

When a guy heads to a seedy bar and slaps a twenty down, ordering the strongest thing you have, he's there to drown his sorrows away, and most likely doesn't want any attention or company aside from the liquor. Those ones need to be watched, now - you never know if they're gonna drink themselves to death, start a fight, or otherwise turn a perfectly fine night upside-down.

Then there's this third group of people, the interesting ones. They'll pick a respectable, decent pub (as I'd like to think mine is, the Rotor n' Prop — we get a lot of pilots, being right by the airfield), order a few strong drinks for courage, and keep looking around at the others, occasionally trying to break into their conversations. I figure the 'friendly bartender' tradition started because of people like this — there's a lot of downtime and you want your patrons to keep coming back, so you might as well jaw a bit. And, sometimes you can even help out.

So I talk with them. Or rather, most of the time, they just want an ear and can't find one elsewhere, and drying glasses means that I have plenty of attention to spare. So they'll talk their bit, I'll nod sympathetically, and they figure things out on their own, and everyone's happy. Their stories run the gamut of problems at work, problems in their relationships, bad sex, homicidal relatives, everything you can think of. I've noticed one thing, in these years — the details may be different (hell, there was a story last week that was just insane), but the human story is to find meaning in some shape or form. Always a quest for the meaning of life, you know?

Every once in a while I'll get some whiner, and there's little to do but tell the boy to man up and take some goddamn responsibility. Sometimes, they even come back after growing some cojones, and become pretty regular patrons — I like those guys. The ones that come back will have pretty decent lives, I figure, because they can take advice when they need to. Not saying that nothing bad's ever gonna happen to them, but they can at least roll with the punches.

And then there are those on the other end of the spectrum. Cocky-ass flyboys that think they're invincible because they've just gotten their wings. Don't matter much what they're flying; Cessna or Beechcraft, or even the Learjet pilots or Navy jocks, hubris is hubris. They think they could land anything with wings after a minute in the cockpit; they think they could fly through a tornado and come out unscathed.

Sometimes, there's a senior airman that will lay it on them, tell them what flat-footed incompetent pants-on-head SOBs that they are, give them the sound verbal ass-kicking that they need. And sometimes, there isn't anyone around to bring the strutting rooster down, and I figure it falls on me.

So I tell them the story:

-

About twenty-five years ago, there was a twenty-two year old rookie pilot named Sean who had just earned his pilot's license. Sean had wanted to fly since he was five or six and saw his first air-show, and pretty much ate, breathed, and dreamed planes. When he got his pilot's license, he thought he was some hot shit. Granted, his pride wasn't entirely unjustified; the instructors had praised him often for his quick learning and fast reactions, and agreed that he'd probably make a hell of a pilot in ten years, if he kept learning. But Sean took it as meaning that he was a hell of a pilot already, and strutted around with aviator glasses, a pilot's cap, and a bomber jacket, despite the fact that he had never flown a military plane.

There was one thing that Sean cared about other than flying, and that was his fiancée, Amber. They'd been childhood friends and after getting over the usual awkwardness of youth, they started dating their junior year of high school. They loved each other, and rarely for a young couple, recognized what they had. Amber had reconciled with the fact that Sean would be in the skies for most of his life and didn't hold his dreams against him; in turn, Sean made sure that if he wasn't flying, he was with her as much as she wanted.

It was to no one's surprise when they got engaged at the end of college, a few months before their five-year anniversary. Sean wanted the day to be something special and called the small airfield, pulling a few strings, and given that he had more or less grown up there, they let him have what he wanted. A Cessna 152 would be waiting for him that Saturday for a two hour flight.

Saturday was bright and sunny and the couple headed to the airfield at about ten in the morning, ready to spend a few hours flying. Sean wanted to get them into the air as soon as possible — and yes, you guessed it — skipped the visual walk around and most of the preflight check. That was his first mistake, though when he taxiied out and took off, the plane responded just fine. For the better part of half an hour, they cruised around, the 'captain' keeping it steady at first, and then trying to impress Amber with his skills. No loops or spins - he wasn't that stupid. But he rolled side to side, took a few dives that were completely unnecessary, and generally behaved like a young idiot with a toy that he didn't fully understand the limits off. Luckily for him, the plane held together...

...until he started the descent for landing. The engine stalled and shut off as he was parallel to the runway, about to make the two final right angle turns to land. "Shit," the tower heard, but that was it. The official report commented that the Cessna acted like it could still make the runway, cutting in and taking the turns early — too early, according to what should have been done — and was going too fast when it approached the runway.

The report stated that with radio silence, it was impossible to tell, but it was likely that the pilot was panicking, especially with someone else in the cockpit with him, and due to that, forgot about the crosswind. A strong gust came in, one that could've been compensated for under normal conditions. The left wing hit the ground, dragged the Cessna to nosedive into the ground, and the plane lost the other wing and ended up rolling about a hundred feet from the point of impact, shedding debris along the way.

Sean woke up from a coma two weeks later; two days after Amber's funeral had happened, and never flew again.

-

It's not a happy story, and I watch their faces as they slowly lose the confident smirk. When I get to the ending, they're somber and reflective, a staggering reversal from the loud and obnoxious 'captains' that came in. They see, I think, a bit of where they could have been and what it means, and take off their pilot's caps, put away their aviator glasses, shrug uncomfortably in their bomber jackets.

And then they shuffle off, their attitudes changed for the afternoon, at least, hopefully longer. Every once in a blue moon, before he goes, the hotshot will ask me a question.

"What did Sean do with his life? Was he ever happy again?"

And I pause for a second, wondering myself, before I respond.

"Well, life goes on. He stumbled around for a while, lost in his guilt, and almost drank himself to death before a friendly bartender set him straight and told him to take responsibility and live his life in a way that Amber would've wanted him to."

And then I pause again, making sure I meet their eyes as I continue.

"Eventually, though, he found something that he could be content with, and became the bartender of a small pub on the edge of an airfield."

They had followed the dirt road for many miles, believing that it would lead them to civilization, or at least  what remained. It was just the two of them now, after the drama, the battles, the brief but sad services for those who had fallen.

The two of them had forged an uneasy alliance in the weeks after meeting, and even started to trust each other, though their survival instincts argued against it. Both of them had been in the wild enough to know that the more people there were, the more supplies they would need to find — and the more likely it was that there would be trouble. But as they found and then lost others, both grudgingly accepted that having someone to watch their back was going to heighten their chances of survival.

When their seven-person group started arguing about the latest kill and who got credit and who should lead, they simply asked for a share that no one would argue with and left. They recognized the signs of a dying group and knew that it wouldn't be long before it got bloody, and the most important thing was to put distance between them and the others.

That night, he woke to the sound of gunfire in the distance and saw distant muzzle flashes from where they had split with the others. A brighter glare — a fire, perhaps — illuminated her features for a moment before she turned, giving a shrug to his silent question. He nodded back, unsurprised, and went back to sleep.

The next day, they broke camp quietly, giving a moment of silence for the uncertain fates of their previous companions, and then set off in the opposite direction from the gunfire. It was risky, because it would be entering the dry salt flats, but there was an unspoken agreement that the most dangerous threat came from behind them. While nature was heartless, it wasn't intelligently malicious.

It had been three days since then and the supplies were dwindling rapidly. Hunger and thirst were no longer occasional visitors, but rather constant companions that dogged their footsteps, slowing them down. They were disciplined and pressed on, taking longer breaks in what shade they could find, eating and drinking less, but it was starting to take its toll.

She crested the hill and saw the gas station, an oddity because it still had all four walls and a roof that still stood. It had been the only real structure that they had seen in days, and she was betting that no one else had been this far into the desert for a long time — from possibly before the Culling. It was almost certain, in fact, and she was only saved from weeping because her self control told her that her body couldn't afford the reckless water loss. Licking cracked lips, she beckoned him to her but stayed quiet, not wanting to give them away just in case someone unfriendly was already calling it home.

He was less reserved and let out a whoop of joy — and then looked chastised as he realized that he had just given them away. But no doors slammed shut, no hostile voices called out across the desert, and after a moment of looking at each other, they both sprinted towards the building, trying their best to dampen their hopes and failing miserably.

She passed him halfway across the hundred meters to the door and almost skipped into the open doorway, scavenger eyes instinctively scanning the room for danger and opportunity.

And then she fell to her knees, tears coming to her eyes as she surveyed the empty, barren, pristine shelves, looking for the supplies she needed to be there, trying to will them into existence, trying desperately not to fall apart.

He walked in behind her then, gasping heavily, holding his side, and simply looked in with empty eyes as they shared a vision of a refuge that could have sustained them for weeks or months. For minutes, they stood there, letting their minds supply what their eyes could not.

And then, having nothing else to do, they set up camp in the middle of the store. They spread their sleeping rolls out, started a fire, and set the single, quarter-full canteen and two strips of jerky between them. Neither said a word as they each took a strip and took a mouthful of water.

That night, she slept, while he kept watch.


The next morning, she was surprised to find that he wasn't there. She whistled an alert, something that should've brought him from wherever he was, and then scrambled to her feet, knife out and ready, when she didn't get an answer. The shelves that crushed her dreams yesterday now stood and shielded possible enemies, as she turned in every direction, trying to find the threats.

And then she looked down and saw the note, written with dirt on the linoleum.

My friend,

We will not both leave here. Have a moment of silence for me.

She saw the line of dirt, carefully poured with the funnel of a fist, that led around the shelf. It was to spare her the sight when she first woke up, she realized, and then slumped to the floor, tears coming once more, alone and hopeless, even as her survival instinct saw a new way out.

To take his sacrifice would be to break a rule that was incontrovertible, one that had stood since the beginning of civilization. The sheer thought of it turned what was left of her stomach, and she told herself she shouldn't even consider it. And yet she did, with increasing regularity, as she sat there with just the shelf separating the two of them, feeling as the hunger and thirst bore down on her. And she knew, too, that if she waited too long, his gift would simply be squandered, fit only for the flies.


That night, she had a moment of silence before starting the fire again, grabbing her sharpest knife, and walking around the shelf to him.