A Brief History of Human Sadness

Part 0

 He was pushed out of his own body by that bullet. 

It sounds strange, he knew, but this is the only accurate description. 

 From the moment he made the decision to take action, it took less than a second. At that time, of course, he could not have known that this brief moment had actually rewritten a complex and delicate equation; as if a weight had fallen from the sky onto one side of the balance. Variables were added, balance was disrupted, order decreased by 1, chaos increased by 1... for the world that was already on the verge of collapse, this was the worst outcome - or perhaps the best. 

He felt as though his soul - if there were a more appropriate term - had flown along the trajectory the bullet should have taken. He looked back in the air, and time seemed to slow down. His body, under the impact of the bullet's force, shifted horizontally in mid-air for a distance before finally finding the starting point of the parabola, descending diagonally until it hit the ground, crawling at her feet. 

She - the woman, the mother of his child. He couldn't see her expression, but he could probably guess: she must be extraordinarily calm. That was exactly what he hoped for, so that she could survive, and their child could survive as well. He could only make this choice because she would make the same choice - not to sacrifice for him, but to save herself. Because in the situation of having to choose between the two, she was the one more qualified to survive, as she always had been, even without the child. 

But at this moment, or rather, at that moment, perhaps it was due to a reluctance to accept death; perhaps because of a sudden burst of thought as life was about to end; or perhaps, simply out of pure, untimely curiosity, he suddenly had a ludicrous idea: what if, both of them, their determination to kill their enemy, and even this planet on the brink of destruction, did not exist? Or, to be more accurate, what if they were another kind of existence?

 Could it be that they and their world were not the only reality? Instead - for example - a movie, a game, a novel? They were so-called "fiction," just like everything they knew; and then, according to some extraordinary rules, fiction was actually another kind of reality? The dreamer did not leave reality,  but crossed into another one. So, perhaps he was not truly dead, there were other possibilities for life, this world still had hope, and he would see her again, see their child.

 One story ends, another begins; or perhaps, there has always been only one story.