Writer Games | Death Wish & 51

Task Seven: Epilogue /F - Maria Thisbe [5]

It is said that time  heals all wounds. It is only unfortunate that some wounds I do not want  to heal, and some wounds it seems never seem to fade. They've scarred,  deep within me. It was only natural; truly I do not hold any ill-will  except to myself. I knew my mind would be too weak to clean the scars.  Instead, they've blistered and infected. I only wish the scars of  adventure had stayed.

The room is silent. The  air is stale. I can barely breathe without my nose, now dry, being  bombarded by the sweet smell of old, tattered books. Sunlight drifts in  streaks from beneath the half-drawn curtain. Papers have yellowed from  where I have forgotten them. Outside, the shops still stand, people  still chatter; I still, once more, sit inside.

I had believed when I  went into such an expedition that things would be different. I had  believed in my youthfulness that a year ago today I would be on the  verge of being recognized for discovering something great. It was all a  scam, it had seemed. We four made it out. Perhaps so did Alicia, I  cannot recall. Even now, I cannot remember any of my fellow  expeditioners. Their faces have faded and in their place is the  remembrance that nothing happened. So it faded. All the memories that  could have been stories to tell to my family were crushed. I had had  dreams before going in, foolish as it may seem. I had dreamed of the  people I would meet and how I would present myself and I dreamed I would  be the one to find the mysterious being lurking in the shadows, ever  calm, ever ready for danger.

But dreams are not meant  for reality. Reality has a way of turning it quickly around. Such is  the matter in which we question our own free will. It is the question of  determinism, whether we may truly predict what may happen due in part  to the world being predetermined. My dreams were not a part of that  reality.

Sadly, I must confess of  having done little since my time in the area. People have a habit of  losing interest after a week, and as thus I had had a scarce amount of  time to revel in the spotlight, to further myself while under scrutiny.  One year and all remnants have gone. The media do not celebrate the  expedition anymore. Perhaps a single publication will go out tomorrow,  speculating on the fates of the survivors of the area. But truthfully, I  cannot envision anything more than a tiny beam of fractured light be  put upon a single one of us remaining.

I have read many books  since I have been home, though. I've reunited with my pets who are doing  well, as my cat currently lies on the patterned couch I should get rid  of some time or another. I visited my family. They have not yet made the  trip to Washington to visit. My work in the observatory has switched to  drawing up programs and information for tourists. I have published a  single, solitary, report on a theory I had for the underlying ideas of  unification and I delved into the mathematics by raising the question of  infinites and if whole numbers would thus exist. I am awaiting a notice  of acceptance or rejection.

The professors must be  chuckling to themselves now. A year has done much in making me feel  utterly useless. The small fame I had garnered turned itself into me  thinking my work would pay off, it had made me elated only to have the  mediocrity settle back nicely. It settled deep within me, like dust that  was kicked up by a brief moment in time only to fall back and sit,  filling my lungs until I can no longer breathe.

Around me my fingers  trace words I long ago wrote. Pen ink stains my fingers, diagrams  scribbled hastily and words illegible crammed in the margins are what I  see. An open textbook, old, one from Sagan, probably outdated.  Everything seemed outdated, moving too fast and zooming by me at ever  greater speeds. I know I cannot be slowing down, because reverse  acceleration is due solely to external forces, and unless the weight of  my scattered thoughts and papers are a force, I have no force less than  the average man. Yet it seems as though as I sit here, in this  hard-backed chair replaying all these images, as though the people  around me are accelerating, being pushed forward by success and  excitement as I stagnate in theories long ago ignored.

There comes a ringing at  the doorbell, but I ignore it. The postman, most likely. Floor two,  room thirteen, is what my letters read. I have several letters that have  come within the last year. They're stowed safely away in a drawer to my  left, beneath the bookshelf. Some are unopened. Those are from the  people who I've met yet I have not enjoyed. Mr. Smith is in there,  somewhere. I believe he has sent two, but I have not opened a single  one. Just seeing his name sends my stomach reeling and my heart racing  in anger.

Perhaps it is selfish  and petty of me to not have opened them. Perhaps people changed. Perhaps  Mr. Smith was writing to apologize, to say sorry for his harsh words  and to implore me to apply after seeing me emerge victorious from the  expedition. But I doubt it People rarely do change, I have found. They  stay the same people, and it is solely their memories that change. We  are inherently the same beings, we gain and gain knowledge until we gain  no more, and that is what is different. But people, they do not change,  we do not change. People may disagree, but I know. I can tell you first  hand the faults of us who do not change, why our world fails.

Outside, war wages on,  people kill people, we are always the same. I have not changed, just as  the stars have not changed. This may seem contradictory, yes, but it's a  new theory I'm working on, you see. The idea that from the Big Bang if  no matter could be created or destroyed, then it is only the formation  of objects that have changed, not things themselves. The tiny atoms and  molecules that make up our world change but yet they do not. They were  here before I was a human and they will be here long after, just as I  myself will become dust to make flowers grow or rain fall. Such is the  beauty, knowing that although it may seem like a harsh reality we live  in, that nothing truly is changing, everything is merely shifting.  Shifting ever closer to this unknown destination, just as I, too, am  shifting.

I can feel it within me,  and I know that though my life may not amount to much more than regrets  of missed chances and grudges, that something will shift, soon. Whether  the shift will be in me or in the world, it is hard to say. I only know  that perhaps with this thought in my mind, perhaps I can go further  than I was and am. And perhaps I will not, but I am not able to stop;  just as I cannot decelerate, nor can I go any faster than a shift will  left me. But I know, as I start to grab my forgotten pen and scribble a  new note on this new thought of mine, that a tiny shift in matter can  send us spiralling into acceleration, and that is, truly, a beautiful  thing.

I only hope I may see  the results before I may take the grave. Life to our mind is little more  than what we can achieve now than what we may be in an obituary or be  ten years past our death.
And I find myself grappling with this  concept every day, from waking to sleep, it haunts me, these thoughts. I  am truly sorry that I may not be exciting, yet as I think of fantasies  not yet determined, I imagine this solitary existence may make for a  great story when I pass. This is only me, and I am selfish and naive and  smart and dumb and I am only a product of who I was a moment ago, so I  do suppose I must make the best of this infinitely short second, for I  feel I have a new idea forming, this new theory. But until then, so it  goes.