METANOIA

Chapter 1 : RAIN

It all began with the rain. I suppose you would have to be a special sort of person to believe good tidings come with the rain, especially the unwelcome midsummer rain of New England.

A rogue rain droplet, unsatisfied with its gravitational destiny, decided to veer off course. This seemingly small cosmic hiccup — perhaps a middle finger to determinism — was the start of an unprecedented rebellion. You see, rain has a unique insight, a limited omniscience into the makings of our frail universe. Armed with this peculiar precognition, when rain decides on a course of action, nothing can stand in its path. Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence.

This droplet weaved its way through the micro-fractures in the ceiling, leading a legion of other plummeting water droplets. It mustered its will to change history and then let go. As the droplet kissed the surface of the ceiling goodbye, it formed a teardrop.

As the teardrop whizzed close to the man's ear, he tilted his head and met it with his eyes. There, locked in a single moment, was humankind's purpose: to bear witness to the marvels of eternity. The universe liked showing off, so it bred an audience.

The droplet landed dead center on the man's iPhone screen.

Confused and oblivious, he gawked upward. There was no visible crack in the ceiling. This seemingly unremarkable event was to trigger a tumultuous turning point in his life. A sudden jolt of confusion sent ripples through his brain. His shock stemmed more from a cerebral rude awakening into something he could not fully comprehend yet. He felt a gargantuan gear in his life slowly churn in a new direction. Oddly enough, at that precise moment, Silas experienced the intense sensation of being a character in a book or a movie or something, not fully in control.

He looked at the droplet sitting comfortably on his phone.

There are many unexplained rules in this universe, and Sir Isaac Newton came fairly close to getting three of them right. Those three universal rules, or laws, are:

"Things like to stay the way they are;"

"Momentous things need a harder push,"

&

"If you rub something the wrong way, it will rub you the wrong way back just as much."

These three rules apply to thermodynamics vaguely, but also to a vast number of tangible objects such as biscuits, rain drops, and bullets. But above all, these rules apply to lovers.

These rules are nothing more than a set of corporate rules Creation resorts to instead of defaulting to micromanagement. As such, they don't always work. Slightly more often than never, the rules are broken. When that happens, the heavens get creative to set life back on track, which, as history teaches us, rarely has a positive outcome.

Today was one of those days. A single droplet of water broke the rules; its disobedience echoed through eternity. No words irk the will of tyranny more than the two that follow:

"Non serviam."

About an hour prior to the drop, Silas had been contemplating what he considered to be one of the most fundamental struggles of the early twenty-first century. He was trying to figure out the minimum number of applications that could be running on his iPhone to preserve its battery life. Silas pondered the "i" in the name "iPhone" — so ubiquitous a denotation of self that it is almost a mockery of the individual lost in the illusion of "personalization." To Silas, choosing which functions to retain was no easy task. Should he keep data roaming on, or did he really need the Bluetooth? Also, his mind deliberated as to whether to use the faster internet connection or its sluggish alternative.

While jugging indecisively about how to decelerate his dwindling battery power, he had come up with various ways he could mitigate its impending death. In truth, planning rarely panned out the way he intended, and the decision — as usual — had already been made for him. As the sirens of procrastination lured his thumb toward the latest Angry Birds icon, he comforted himself: How much battery power could a little gameplay possibly consume?

Silas had been playing Angry Birds for nearly twenty minutes when the droplet landed, and he hadn't even noticed his battery had waned to nearly zero. The aqueous mischief had one more trick up its sleeve: the resulting butterfly effect had unraveled a long and interesting alternative universe fate had woven for Silas. Thus, an elaborate course of events faded into obscurity.

If things had gone according to plan, today would have been the day Silas met the love of his life (well, to the extent a man like him can conceive of "love"). In a few hours, he was destined to have checked into a hotel with an equally promiscuous blonde named Stacy. A few more business trips to New York would turn into a long-distance relationship, and then a serious relationship eventually. They were meant to be together just shy of eight years (a record-breaker for the both of them), even with plenty of others slipping in and out of their lives. Their particular relationship was going to end in acute disaster, which is what they were accustomed to. In his streak of self-loathing, this would have been the only sort of relationship Silas would have been comfortable with.

At this moment, Stacy was on her way here, but their paths were no longer intertwined. Now he was too distracted by his immediate concerns to start something with her.

Meanwhile, The Flying Spaghetti Monster — or whoever runs the shit-show we call life — was furious. Its wobbling, noodly appendages were plucking away meticulously at destiny, attempting to rewrite this riot into normalcy. Alas, the damage was already done; history was being rewritten; a droplet of water was to be punished. Sacrifices had to be made.

Silas was oblivious to the chain of events that had been set in motion over the next four days. For quite some time now, he had been yearning for something interesting to happen. The last few years of his life had grown stale, and he was bitter. He had cocooned himself within a shell of misogyny and spite, fornicating his way through life, a life which had morphed into mind-numbing monotony. He yearned for change as much as he feared what it would do.

Looking back, he likely would have preferred something a little less personal: perhaps something a little more riveting, like witnessing a thunderstorm during a volcanic eruption, or surviving an earthquake that flattens a city, or encountering lustful aliens craving for Homo sapiens sex.

Something...anything...

Sometimes we forget how fickle, fleeting moments of sudden realizations have a stupendous effect upon our souls. Silas was to become a powerful vessel in a rebellion in which he had no real claim to authority. His oppressor was Fate. The universe had awoken and was busy correcting this particular offense to reset this novel entropy.

When Silas pressed the beckoning home button and turned off the game, he realized, with a pang of panic, he had only four percent battery life left. Alarmed, he dove into the depths of his luggage to fish out the phone's charger. Plugging it in, he leaned back against the wall in relief.

Silas turned off the screen to accelerate the charge. He looked at the blank screen and saw his reflection. The water droplet was still there, distorting his reflection and making one of his eyes look humungous.

He looked funny.

Silas also realized, even without the droplet distorting his face, he looked uglier than the usual mental image he had of himself. The discrepancy between self-image and reality fascinated him profoundly. He had become a stranger to the one thing he thought he truly knew.

Perhaps riding inside the lump in his throat, or the creeping pressure behind his eyes, a surge of feelings slowly swelled to the surface of his soul, followed by an odd, impending sense of doom.