A Timeless Speck on a Timed Venture
An existential monologue
Today I am here. Tomorrow I am not. It has taken the entire time of my existence to digest this fact. It was a difficult pill to swallow, given the thrill of not acknowledging its presence and deciding to exchange it for temporary fulfillment. What more pleasing act is there than to avoid inevitable doom? It’s quite appealing; visiting ATMs serving receipts of deposits of moments scrapped off our life’s calendar. Not that we count them, usually.
I know I didn’t until I encountered the moment that would decipher the rest of the incoming ones. The moment my newborn son laid in my arms, explaining exactly the reason I hadn’t given up on life. The moment I realized I wasn’t living for me, but for the latest arrival of the purest form of life glancing at me. And, ultimately, the moment I gave up ignoring the pill that was stored safely in the container of my heart.
“Did you catch that, Samuel?”
“Yes, indeed ma’am, and you can call me Sam,” his voice grunts through the communication system’s speaker. “Oh, and rest assured our conversation is being recorded, so just for future reference everything you’ve just said will be sent to your loved ones accordingly…”
I grin, trying to prevent it from sounding on the other end of the line but failing miserably.
I can’t think of any loved ones alive apart from my son.
“What time is it there, Sam?”
“It’s 6 a.m. ma’am,” his voice mutters.
It’s coarse. Almost sounding like it’s owned by a teenager, at most a young man in his early twenties. He should be an intern falling victim to the initial requirements of unreasonable working hours at the space traffic control. In the scope of his tone I am immediately sent back to 2070, 20 years ago.
“I’m afraid I can’t compute that from where I’m located at the moment,” I confess as I gaze around the space’s jet black matter hugging the spacecraft.
I like it here. I may stay a while… for as long as I am allowed to breath.
“Okay, let’s try this again, shall we? Why did you travel past the advised length of the orbits?”
That is a very good question, Sam. I wonder what your answer would have been had you been in my seat, gaining a first class view of the springs and dashes of endless stars inviting you to explore their base of utter infinity. I wonder how you would have felt had you found yourself wholly and indefinitely surrounded by the beginning and end of everything you have ever known, know and will know. A chance to understand even a fraction of an equation you have been trying to solve your entire life, knowing that merely a dose of its clarity is enough to take with you to the vast unknown. Knowing you have reached the beginning of the end to it all.
Author’s note: Thank you for reading. :)
This is the opening chapter from a book I recently published, A Glimpse of Eternity — an experimental collection of poetry and short stories told through the perspective of Sara, a woman experiencing an existential crisis.
In a futuristic world, she decides to take on a space mission abandoned by her late husband, during with she reflects on life, death and everything in between.
For anyone who would be interested in continuing the story, it is now available on Amazon in digital form here.