A Spaceman

Chapter 1--The Unknown

I've always wondered what goes on in other people's heads. Not what they think of me. I already know that. I want to know what they think about.

Every second.

Of every day.

Because I know they are nothing like me.

When I was young, I thought that everyone thought like me. I thought the universe lay before them in the perfect map, that faces were open.

Now I know I was wrong.

It's simple for them.

One plane. One thing in front of them. That's what they're thinking about.

For me it's more like eight planes of thought. It always has been.

There is the thing in front of me. Say the girl. I think about the girl. I think about wanting to hold the girl in my arms.

But that's not all I think about.

I think about seven other things. At the same time. Like eight different screens playing in my head all once.

One is devoted to her. Another is devoted to flying. It's how soon I can be flying again. What I could do better. How I will get myself to where I am flying. One for flying, and then the one focused on her.

The other six vary, based on what's going on. But they're never constant. One analyzes what's happening in front of me. One analyzes what has happened. One analyzes what could happen. Then the other three are analyzing what I want to happen.

So I thought everyone thought like that. I thought it worked like that for all of them.

But it isn't.

Because their reactions don't make sense. Not based on logic. It makes me angry. When I can't tell what they're thinking.

About a million years ago, Shakespeare said "There's no art to finding the mind's construction in the face." A few hundred years later, Paul Eckman pretty much blew that theory out of the water.

Because we all want to know the mind's construction, don't we? Every move I make, there is always the hidden variable. The unknown. The one thing I did not account for. I hate that. I absolutely hate that. but it will always be there, haunting me.

On three planes I try to account for it. Still it eludes me.

And I'm alone in the dark.

I found one who is like me. He's clever. Too clever by half, as they say. He gets to two planes, I think. I can't be sure. We never know the mind's construction, do we? But I think he does. He may be worth the game. The flip.

Because I know what I hate.

I hate being wrong.

I hate the unknown slapping me in the face.

So that's what I do to them.

ALL of them.

My first lover, rolls over in the dark, kissing my lips again. I slapped her face. change the scene. Alter the reality. Become the unexpected that was so unexpected it was unknown. I laughed. She pulled my hand back and kissed me again, holding me down so that I would not hurt her again.

SHE became the unexpected.

And that is why I knew I loved her.

It was strange, because I had not felt emotion till then. Somewhere in my seventeenth year. I had adrenaline, I enjoyed that. anger, at being thwarted, which I did not enjoy, but did enjoy the experience. But those are base, those are animal emotions. The emotions that separates us from animals are the emotions of the heart. Love, sadness, passion, loyalty, those things.

I don't have those.

I learned that, when I slapped her and she held my hand and kissed me again. l felt the surge somewhere in my soul of buried deep or locked emotions. And I want to know what they are. But I have not found them for any other creature on any other planet in this odd galaxy.

There's only her.

That's why one plane is devoted to her. To understanding what she does to me that nothing else does.

Because if I understand that, I might know how the others think.

And if I know that, then I can destroy them.

And watch them burn.

And suffer.

And sob.

As they realize I am the unknown.