The Cartography of Infinite Spaces by Joe Luther

The Cartography of Infinite Spaces by Joe Luther

“Ethan,” she whispered, her chubby fingers lightly drumming on my forearm. Her voice, little more than a breath in the vast, vaulted place, was just enough to wake me from my reverie.

I abruptly ceased the anxious, involuntary scraping of my thumbnail against a hardened frosting stain on my pant leg, shifted subtly in the stiff, unforgiving wooden pew, and oriented myself to the world before me. Long, narrow stained-glass windows from up high bathed me, the rest of the congregation, and even the gray stone floors beneath my feet in warm, vibrant hues of fractured light.Between the majestic light pouring in from above and the sleek, stone floors below, the artistry of august wooden relief carvings depicting the Stations of the Cross adorned the walls of the church’s nave. Before I had time to take in the other ornate features and religious iconography of the church, my gaze drifted to meet hers.

Her face was deeply familiar, yet distant in my mind: round flushed cheeks, a conspicuously missing front tooth, thin eyebrows that rested over brown almond shaped eyes. Her hair, a messy brown pixie cut, framed a wholesome, unblemished face – the very personification of childhood innocence. I mouthed the first syllable of her name in disbelief before she struck me a spirited, yet playful blow in the chest.

“Ssshh…,” she hushed. “I kept tapping you and saying your name, why were you ignoring me?”

“Megan…?” I asked incredulously, as the dull lingering warmth of her cherub-like fist began to fade.

“Is something wrong? Do you feel okay?” her brow furrowed as she reached over and placed her hand on top of mine. Her angelic fingers curled around the palm of my hand, and I smiled to myself as a warm, tingling sensation grew in the pit of my stomach. The tenderness of her innocence, her concern, and her love, the kind that only a child can bestow on another child, brought barely perceptible tears to the corner of my eye.

“Now, let us all stand and pray at the Savior’s command,” the priest recited as the congregation rose in unison with Megan steadying me and helping me to my feet, “and informed by divine teaching, we dare to say…”

“Oh, no,” she exclaimed softly, in the midst of the church’s recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. “Something’s wrong. Are you sick? Should I tell Mrs. Powers?”

“I’m okay,” I responded, still attempting to acclimate to yet another memory recall. Shake off the uncertainty, the disorientation, I told myself. Embrace the moment. You’re in 2nd grade, sitting in church beside a little girl whose name, until now, had been lost to the dust of years past. Just revel in the innocence and beauty of it all.

“I just got a little dizzy for a second. I think I started falling asleep or something. What were you saying…Megan?” I added tentatively, as the Lord’s Prayer came to an end.

“I’m moving next week,” she whispered, pulling out the kneeler from below us. She guided me down beside her, and we lowered ourselves to our knees. She clasped her hands together and bowed her head in a show of solemn prayer on the ledge of the pew in front of us. I followed her lead.

“We are going back to Kansas,” she muttered, her head resting on her intertwined fingers with eyes downcast. “Back to Kansas to live with my grandmother. I don’t want to go. I love it here, and I love you. You’re my best friend. I love you, Ethan. I really, really do.”

The sweetness of her declaration made my chest flutter and my pulse quicken. I turned my head ever so slightly to steal a glance at her, careful not to meet her eyes or betray our secret exchange during the solemnity of the mass. A tear began to slide down her cheek as my own heart began to swell with the truest, purest sense of love. For a lonely little boy, so often spurned, love had finally arrived. A light amidst so much darkness, a note of adoration slicing through the endless, suffocating void of stillness. And yet, just as this fragile bond had begun to blossom, we were being torn apart. 

I nestled closer to her, playfully bumping my elbow against her.

“I love you, too. Don’t worry; we’ll always be friends. We can write, we can see each other in the summer, we could even…”

And just like that, we both felt the simultaneous tap on the shoulder of a big, meaty index finger. I cocked my head slightly to the left and beheld the teacher most feared by the students of St. John’s: Mrs. Powers. Her plump, middle aged figure, tightly cropped hair, and permanent scowl inspired fear in even the boldest of school-aged children. Bloodshot, watery eyes glared at me through the sharp, narrow slits of her eyelids. A slow, audible sigh of resignation issued from my chest as she motioned the two of us from our pew to the adjoining aisle. 

With a look of indignation, she motioned for us to continue following her out into the foyer. As the heavy wooden doors separating the foyer from the nave swung shut behind us, her demeanor hardened. Trembling with fury, she pointed an accusing finger at the two of us and began her seething tirade. 

“What do you think you are doing talking during the blessing of the body and blood of our Savior? Is your conversation more important than your relationship with the Almighty? I certainly can’t think of anything more important to me. Tell me, what was so important that it couldn’t wait until after the service?”

I stared down at my once white tennis shoes, now marred by scuffs and stains, unable and unwilling to meet her eyes. All I could focus on were the frayed, dirty shoelaces – tattered, overlooked, and forgotten – insidiously mocking me right in front of Megan, Mrs. Powers, and a God I wasn’t even sure I believed in.

“No response, huh?,” she retorted sharply. “Well, I’ll teach you a lesson about respect you are sure to never forget.”

Her arm reached for Megan, but before making contact, it had begun to tremble violently. Mrs. Powers’ once portly appendage began to stiffen and then narrow into a slender tentacle. This new limb elongated and then shifted to a pale green hue that coiled itself tightly around Megan’s torso like that of a serpent engaged in a deadly embrace with its newfound prey.

“Megan,” I shrieked.

Megan began to whimper, her cries filling the room as she was lifted off her feet, suspended helplessly in the air.

“I’m sorry. Please, Mrs. Powers. Please, let her go,” I implored. “It was my fault. I was the one talking!”

Mrs. Powers’ head abruptly turned toward me, and in an instant, her other arm morphed into another slender green tentacle extending slowly, yet menacingly toward me.

“No,” I screamed. “Please don’t…”

& & &

As soon as she dropped her backpack to the floor, her phone buzzed with a message notification.

“Hey, sweetie! How was your day? How did that chemistry exam treat you?”

After a quick glance at the screen, she rolled her eyes and slid the phone back into the pocket of her leggings. The familiar, reflexive rhythm of her after school ritual guided her to the table where she dropped her keys with a satisfying clink. In her typical haphazard, carefree manner, she shrugged off her coat and scarf, both still damp with melting snowflakes from the nascent winter storm outside, and tossed them onto the floor near the entryway.

She then kicked off her tennis shoes, sending them tumbling on top of the growing pile of clothing near the front door, and slipped on a pair of comfortable, well-worn slippers. As she made her way into the living room unencumbered by the trappings of the day, she raked her fingers through the damp strands of her hair to prevent the icy trickle of cold water that was sure to run down her neck and back – a sensation that had irked her since early childhood. Upon reaching the couch, she collapsed sideways into a mound of throw pillows, arms sprawled out in a dramatic show of surrender to all the stresses and setbacks of the week. Reaching for her phone, she let loose a deep, weighted sigh and became conscious of the familiar bulk and warmth of her beloved dog, Cici, nestled stealthily and snugly behind her cushioned sanctuary of accent pillows and tangled blankets.

“Hey you,” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you get up and greet me?”

Cici continued to lay there looking up at her with big, wide eyes and a hesitant, yet excited thump of her tail. Her beloved dog, once active and cheerful, had slowed down in recent years. Her once energetic, playful demeanor had faded seemingly overnight into that of an old, arthritic dog content to lay on the couch and passively accept whatever love and attention came her way.

“You still miss seeing dad everyday, don’t you? I better return his message before he starts blowing up my phone.”

With her head resting comfortably against her dog, she began typing out a response to her father.

“Just another day, dad. Chemistry went okay, but stoichiometry is just plain awful.”

His response was almost instantaneous.

“Well, I’m sure you did great. Make sure you ask your teacher for help if you have questions. Obviously, I am not going to be good at helping you with the state I’m in, and your mother was never really good at that kind of stuff either.”

“Dad, my teacher’s a fucking robot, a machine. It’s all online. The ‘teacher’ is in the room monitoring like fifty of us, and he is terrible at explaining things. The guy is just a warm body”

“Anna, I hate when you use language like that.”

“I’ve been talking like this since I was like five years old. It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t talk like that at school, just at home, so who cares? Oh wait, I mean, who gives a shit?”

Shortly after pressing send, she chuckled and decided a strategic smiley face emoji was in order.

“You are lucky you are such a sweet kid despite your vulgar language. Your mother and I have never been able to control you. Speaking of which, is your mother around? I need to talk to her about something.”

“I don’t know where she is…why didn’t you just send her a message?”

“I did, but she hasn’t answered.”

“She must be hung up at work with a client. It’s the holidays – lots of depressed people and maniacs running around this town. Speaking of which, on my way home today…”

“Can you have her message me as soon as she gets home? It’s important.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There have been some weird things going on with this online interface the past few days. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but I need your mother to call and figure out what, if anything, I should do about it.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell her. Anyway, on my way home today, this total dipshit cut right in front of me…”

& & &

“Ethan,” she whispered, her words warm against my lips. My first sight upon waking into this life were those green eyes – vivid and unyielding, imprinted indelibly onto my soul.

“Let’s do it. Tonight. We’ve been together six months. I love you. I want you.”

Her words evoked the deepest, most primal feelings of my being, but my thoughts remained scattered as I struggled to anchor myself within the chronicles of my own past. I recognized her immediately, though. Elizabeth. Her short fiery red hair, pale alabaster skin, and adoring green eyes evoked a vision from antiquity of some long-forgotten Irish goddess. If I were to survive another hundred years and retain but a fraction of my mind and memories, I would know her.

Her words, “together six months,” provided me with a definitive point in my own timeline. I am a young man, in my late teens, at the threshold of what will be one of life’s most powerful, emotional experiences: my first sexual experience.

I broke my gaze with her for just a moment to glance around the space occupied by the two of us and felt the slow, involuntary pull of a smile across my face. The cramped, sparse decor of my first studio apartment was before me. Its bare walls, stacks of secondhand books, mismatched furniture, and one of those old tube style televisions collectively filled me with a kind of bittersweet nostalgia. A longing for simpler times – an unencumbered, healthy existence – mingled with the bitter reminder of the struggles of poverty and hardship. The months when skipping a meal was required in order to keep the water on, or when slipping a few dollars from a friend or family member’s wallet or purse was more about survival than betrayal. Walking across a snowy campus with bargain bin shoes that soaked up every drop of moisture and a checking account overdrawn with nothing but the promise that one day, I wouldn’t have to live like this anymore. One day, I would have everything I ever wanted or ever dreamed of – as long as I did everything just right, followed all the steps preached to me for years by every adult I had ever known. Foolish promises, all of them, born of a combination of naivety, ignorance, wishful thinking, and, perhaps, even my own misguided belief that the world owed me something for all that I had been forced to endure. Promises believed so fervently and devoutly by a young man too blind to see the struggles and unforeseen complications waiting just beyond the horizon – ready to find me when I least expected it. 

“Where are you, Ethan?” Her hand caressed my cheek. “I feel like your head is in the clouds or something.”

I flashed her a devilish grin, and brought my lips to hers with unrestrained passion. My teeth grazed her bottom lip, tugging gently and seductively with just enough force to send a shiver of ecstacy through both of us. Gripping her shoulders, I guided her gently down onto the couch, my warm body pressed against hers as the world around us narrowed to a singular, carnal purpose.

“I want you to know something,” she began, pulling back just enough to meet my gaze, her hands sliding up to rest gently, yet firmly on my shoulders. “This means something to me. You are incredibly handsome and sexy to me, but this is about more than that for me.”

“Why thank you, little lady…” I replied in an exaggerated baritone voice, cocking an eyebrow and tipping an imaginary cowboy hat with dramatic flourish.

She slapped my chest playfully, chortled, and smiled coyly.

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone else,” her smile faded, replaced by an intensity in her eyes that was both tender and earnest in its conviction. Even now, I can feel it piercing through to the innermost part of me  – a look so genuine, it renders all the mind’s whispers and meanderings silent.

“You’re not perfect,” she continued. “But none of us are. I love you, though. I love you for all of your faults: your grumpiness in the morning, your smoking when you get anxious, the way you can’t stand being late, the way you hide how you really feel about things…and people.”

I rolled my eyes defensively and commenced caressing her inner thigh.

“And then, of course,” she smiled, slapping my unruly hand away. “I love you for all of the wonderful parts about you. The way that anyone, anywhere can tell you’re a good person after just a few minutes of talking with you. How, deep down, you care so much about others and always try to treat everyone with the kindness and respect they deserve. You have a quiet, inner sweetness about you that anyone who gets to know you can’t help but see. Sorry, I am probably getting a little too sappy, but I just wanted you to know how I feel.”

“It’s not sappy,” I replied hesitantly, my voice thick with emotion. “You know I’m not as good as you at expressing how I feel sometimes, but I hope you know I love you. I’m not sure if this is selfish or not, but I love you most of all for teaching me how to love. I love you for giving me another chance at living – I honestly don’t think I’d have gotten this far without you. Last year, I was just so alone, and so hopeless that I just didn’t even think love was a possibility for someone like me. Anyway, I just hope I’ve given you half as much as you’ve given me.”

I pulled my sweatshirt sleeve down over my hand to wipe away the tears that had started to form at the corners of my eyes. 

“Shit, talk about getting sappy. I’m sorry if I ruined the mood.”

“Come here, lay next to me for a minute,” she whispered softly, her arms coaxing me gently down beside her. She shifted slightly, her back pressed against the cushions of the couch as I settled in beside her. Her gaze held mine as her fingers wove through my hair with a soothing, almost hypnotic rhythm.

I slid my hand down her back, letting it drift to her inner thigh, as I began tracing slow, deliberate semi-circles against her skin. She let out a quiet moan and breathed hard against the top of my head as her fingers gripped my hair tightly with unspoken desire. My hand wandered higher along the inseam of her jeans, pausing at the warmth pulsing just beneath the fabric.

She sat up ever so slightly, peeled her shirt off, and unzipped her pants. Before settling back beside me on the couch, she kissed me forcefully and, with her breath hot against my cheek, whispered, “I sure hope you came prepared, lover boy.”

“Right under this couch cushion here, little cowgirl,” I replied, resuming my baritone, country western persona in a playful attempt to mask the excitement and trepidation coursing through every facet of my being.

I plunged my eager hand between the couch cushions searching for the familiar crinkle of foil – an object stashed months ago in preparation for this very moment. After fumbling around anxiously for what felt like hours, my fingertips brushed over the foil packaging with its fine serrated edges and promise of pleasure within. But instead of the cool, smooth surface I expected, an unanticipated sensation seized my hand: heat.

It began as a sharp, almost imperceptible pinprick sensation that numbed my fingertips, but upon removing my hand from the couch cushion, the ostensible source of heat, the sensation only intensified. The fingers of my right hand began to stiffen and ache as though an invisible, yet heavy weight were bearing down with unbearable pressure. The stiff, dull ache quickly morphed into an almost blinding pain, as if something inside me was slowly igniting, scorching each nerve in an almost systematic fashion.

“Something’s wrong, Liz,” I cried out, examining my hand desperately for any visible signs of injury or trauma. “My hand feels like it’s… it’s on fire…”

The burning coursed upward at an increasing rate, reaching my elbow with a pain that was suffocating in its intensity leaving me unable to communicate. My mind, once consumed by thoughts of love and passion, was now subsumed by searing pain. 

“Oh my God, what’s happening?” her eyes grew wide in panic. “Are you having a heart attack? Are you allergic to something?” She leapt from the couch, one hand clutching her shirt to her chest while the other frantically searched the apartment for my phone.

When the scalding heat reached my neck, it spilled across my shoulders and began its descent down my left arm. Unable to speak, I collapsed to my knees and began drawing in slow, labored, gasping breaths in an effort to maintain consciousness in the face of so much agony. Despite the pain and its efforts to consume every aspect of consciousness, a part of me held on – desperate to make this moment of love, of passion, and of youth last just a while longer.

& & &

Brenda sat comfortably on the couch, a plush, recently purchased quilt lay draped over her legs as her laptop rested squarely on the nearby armrest. She paused reading the document on her screen and leaned forward to grab her cup of green chai tea from the coffee table, disturbing the family dog sprawled lazily across her lap in the process. After taking a warm, satisfying drink from her most cherished mug, the one adorned with the caricature of Ruth Bader Ginsburg performing bicep curls, a subtle vibration and sharp audible chime issued from her phone resting just behind her laptop. With her mug still in hand, she folded down the laptop slightly so as to glimpse at the notification illuminating her phone.  

“Brenda, did you get around to calling those jerk offs at Aion Systems? It’s been three days now, and whatever is going on here is not getting any better.”

Her shoulders, fingers, and visage visibly stiffened as she beheld the contact name and the message. She calmly turned the phone face down and released a long, weary sigh that seemed to emanate from the deepest depth of her being – a sigh that betrayed the heavy burdens she had silently borne these past three months and the suffocating melancholia that permeated the now threadbare relationship that existed between her and her husband, Ethan.

“Mom,” Anna called out eagerly as she burst into the living room, her phone in one hand and a gym bag in the other. “Can you give me a ride up to school? A bunch of the girls are going to open gym to get ready for our basketball game tomorrow.”

Brenda stared ahead blankly, her eyes transfixed on some unseen detail on her daughter’s outfit, lost in a maze of swirling thoughts and emotions regarding her husband. She blinked hard, shook her head dramatically, and snapped back to reality.

“I can, but not right this second. I need to finish this documentation, and then I need to answer your father.”

Anna allowed her gym bag to slide off her shoulder, letting it fall softly to the floor, before lowering herself onto the couch opposite her mother. Her eyes, wide with a mix of fear and concern, locked onto her mother, as she sought both reassurance and a degree of clarity about her father. The room grew heavy, suffused with unspoken tension and an almost palpable sense of dread.

“Yeah,” Anna spoke softly, yet there was an air of quiet determination in her voice that demanded nothing less than the unvarnished truth. “What’s going on with him?”

Brenda closed her laptop in a calm, deliberate manner. In her heart, she knew Ethan would prefer keeping these concerns secret from his only daughter, but Brenda was also aware of Ethan’s tendency to infantilize his daughter who was only one short year away from graduating high school and heading off to college. Brenda decided that openness and honesty were preferable to half truths and duplicity. Anna’s stubborn, unyielding nature was yet another factor in her decision to be open and honest.

“Well, sweetheart,” she began, gently pushing the dog aside before gesturing for her daughter to settle in beside her. “It sounds like the online interface or system or whatever you want to call it that dad is stored in is having some issues. When he messaged you the other day, he had also been messaging me about some bizarre events that were occurring during his memory recalls. I didn’t get back to him quick enough, so he also reached out to you. I’m sure you are well aware of your father’s impatience.”

“What kind of problems?”

“You know how dad is able to communicate within the interface to those in the outside world through messaging, right? That’s his connection to us and the rest of the world, but for right now at least, his only other form of entertainment is reliving and replaying, I guess you would say, old memories. The sales guy from Aion called them ‘memory recalls.’ Anyway, this is how dad spends most of his time, that is until more people become a part of this online interface. I guess at a certain point when there are “x” amount of people in the interface, then programs or something will be created where all of them can interact. I really don’t remember all of the specifics, but the sales guy likened it to ‘Sim City’ for us old folks.”

“What the hell is Sim City?”

Brenda flashed her daughter a sharp, austere look.

“I mean…so what’s going on with dad’s memory recalls?” 

“Well, it sounds like dad is still able to access these old memories and relive them, but at a certain point they take a bizarre, nightmarish turn. Apparently, it is happening more and more frequently. Your father said it first began a month ago during a memory recall about you as an infant. He was feeding you, and suddenly, the noodles on your tray turned into worms. Since then, these ‘intrusions’ have been happening more often and they are becoming more intense and more frightening. After dad’s barrage of messages the other day, I called the company, Aion Systems, the ones who sold dad on the interface. After a lot of transfers and time on the phone, I found out this is a problem affecting several of the interface’s occupants or users or whatever you want to call them. They are aware of the problem and working to fix it, but there’s some concern that it may not be something they can resolve.”

“So, what happens if they can’t fix it? What’s going to happen to him?”

“Your father knew the risk when he agreed to do this. I begged him not to, but in the end, it was his life. He told me he just couldn’t stand the pain anymore, and you can’t ask someone to suffer for you. Anyway, the man I spoke with at Aion told me that if they can’t correct the issue, then they will need to take out all of the occupants for a period of time, completely overhaul the interface, and then reintroduce everyone to the new interface. This could take some time, and there is no guarantee that when your father is reintroduced to this new interface that, well, certain parts of him, certain memories won’t be lost.”

Tears welled up in Anna’s eyes and with no words exchanged between the two, she buried her face in the soft quilt draped over her mother’s lap. Instinctively, Brenda’s arms enveloped her and pulled her close.

“I know, baby, it’s scary,” she whispered, stroking her daughter’s long, blonde hair. “After all, who are we really but the sum total of all of our memories and all of our experiences?”  

& & &

When I opened my eyes, I knew exactly where I was. My back was stiff from sitting too long in one of those uncomfortable, standard issue hospital chairs, and my right leg bounced restlessly, the heel tapping a faint, regular rhythm against the thin tile flooring. The room was quiet – the broken, reverent whispers of family members and a few hospital staff were just barely audible against the shrill, unrelenting beep of monitors and machinery.

During what appeared to be the end of a solemn, tear-filled conversation with my father, my uncle David’s eyes found mine. He laid his hand gently on my father’s back, excused himself, and made his way over to me. 

“I know it’s hard,” he said in his gravelly voice tinged with a faint southern accent.  “But I think you need to come over and say goodbye. There isn’t much time left.”

I buried my head in my hands, slumped forward, and stared down despondently at the cold tile floor beneath my feet. I looked intently, pensively almost, at that white tile flooring interspersed with swaths of gray searching desperately for shapes, figures, hidden messages – anything to pull me away from the memory in which I found myself.

David crouched down low beside me, his hand resting lightly on my back, a tacit gesture of comfort and reassurance.

“I can’t,” I muttered, holding back tears. “I just can’t do this again.”

“I know. Trust me, I know. If you don’t, though, you’ll always wish you had.”

His hand moved from the top of my back to my waistline, a gentle yet firm gesture that compelled me to stand and move toward my sister’s bed. With his steadying touch and comforting aesthetic wrapped around me, I reluctantly shuffled toward the edge of the hospital bed where the rest of the family stood gathered. Glances and timid smiles filled with pity adorned the faces of those who parted from each other in order to offer me an unobstructed path to my six year old sister’s bedside.

A pink blanket covered her, its top edge gently folded over her chest, which rose and fell with each labored breath, a breath accompanied by a soft, wet rattle from deep within her. Her right arm rested at her side, an IV line snaked up her forearm no doubt delivering tiny doses of morphine to ease her departure from a world that had only offered her years of sporadic suffering and heartache. 

With a visible tremor shaking my body, my eyes met her face. Her cheeks, once round and angelic, were now gaunt and sallow from months of aggressive, yet ultimately futile treatments. My attention turned upward to the crescent-shaped scar that curved around the right side of her skull coming to rest just behind her ear, a cruel visible reminder to us all of yet another failed attempt to excise that malicious creation of her own body. With my uncle still at my side, I brought both hands to my face, rubbed my eyes and cheeks vigorously, and let loose a long, shuddering sigh. For a moment, it was as though the sigh itself became imbued with life – lingering and drifting through the room, sailing on a sea of palpable sorrow and incredulity that emanated from each of us in this small, shared space. 

My uncle gave my shoulder a squeeze – another gentle, unspoken bit of encouragement urging me on to say or do as I saw fit in these final moments. Because I could not remember the words I had spoken all those years ago, when I was just a young man on the cusp of finishing high school, and thirty more years of life had brought me no new flashes of wisdom, I simply rested my hand on top of hers and cradled it gently in my own. 

With my hand still on hers, I looked up pleadingly at my uncle and whispered, “This is all I can do. Can I please go sit back down?”

He nodded his head solemnly and led me back to my chair. Before even returning to my seat, the monitors and machinery in the room erupted into a cacophony of frantic beeping. The labored breathing from my sister shifted to that of deep, intermittent gasps for air, visibly sapping the strength and composure of everyone present in the room, while also drawing them closer to each other. I longed to join the circle of family members that inched forward in unison to her bedside, each of their hands gently gripping or holding a part of her, but I could not.

One last long, shallow breath, followed by a faint gurgling sound, reverberated through the room, followed by a collective wail of grief. Sounds that have never left my memory no matter how desperately I wished they would during those sleepless nights and restless mornings.

As it sometimes happens in life, there are moments when the world around us seemingly slows for a time. And in these moments we are afforded the opportunity to disconnect from the dizzying rhythm of modern existence and reflect in real-time, not in retrospect, on the immediacy and implications of events. It was in this moment, just as it had been for me all those years ago, that I understood the futility of all the world’s systems designed to make meaning out of our fragile existence. The attempts to console, to offer reasons and explanations for the design of things and the suffering we are all brought to bear at one time or another were stripped bare as nothing more than lullabies. Lullabies designed, told, and sold to us to ease us off to a kind of sleep. A sleep where we rest comfortably day by day with the belief that somewhere beyond this existence, something more awaits us.

Upon loosing myself from my reflection, the room stood visibly and unnerving still. The soft murmurs, piercing cries, and jagged, uneven breaths had all fallen silent. The faces of my family and other occupants were frozen in various states of grief and shock, but there was no sound, no movement. As I shifted my gaze and craned my neck about the room, searching for some sign of life, the individual features of each person began to dull. Gradually, their clothing, characteristics, and color faded until they took on a gray, ashen appearance. Soon, my family members and the hospital staff were distinguishable only by height and weight, their fine details and nuances reduced to nothing more than a dusty, grainy texture – mere outlines of their former selves.

Stricken with fear, I stood motionless, speechless, and bereft of thought waiting for whatever horror was to unfold next. Moments later, an inexplicable soft gust of wind pushed open the door and stirred the ashes of the room’s occupants – scattering them across the floor like sand swept up in the restless storm of a desert’s endlessly shifting landscape. 

In the midst of so much pain and confusion, I looked down, returning to those cold white floor tiles beneath my feet, searching for answers in those familiar swaths of gray and the fresh teardrops that fell against them.

& & &

“First, I want to say that I love both of you girls so much. Selfishly, I put both of you through a lot these past few months, and I’ve come to realize how unfair that’s been. I don’t want to justify my own selfishness, but when I got diagnosed- and then things just got worse and worse, to the point where I couldn’t even work anymore, where the pain just consumed me – I felt that life had cheated me.

When I met you, Brenda, and fell in love and we had little Anna, I felt like I was finally going to get the happily ever after I deserved in life. After all the pain, the hardship, and the tragedy, I thought I’d earned it. So when the doctor told me I had this disease and that there was no real cure, I couldn’t accept it. I just couldn’t. That’s how I got pulled into believing the promises that slick bastard from Aion Systems sold me.

Now, that the interface is crashing or falling apart or whatever, I realize now that I tried to cheat. I’ve tried to cheat my way out of facing my own mortality. All of these memory recalls, and the way they’ve been glitching or corrupting or whatever, they’ve forced me to see something I missed for years. What makes being a human being special isn’t how long we can stretch out life or how much we can control it. It’s the opposite. Life’s value comes from the fact that it ends. That it’s finite. This is it and that’s part of what makes life beautiful.

And suffering – oh, how I’ve hated it and tried to run from it, but even that’s part of what makes us human. It’s not just the sensation of pain (physical or emotional), but our awareness of it. The way each of us carries it, tries to describe it, and even share it with others. The way we try to find meaning in it, or try to rise above it. It’s terrible, oftentimes unbearable, but there’s a strange, undeniable beauty in it’s inescapability and universality.

So, I’ve made my decision. Tell Aion Systems to kick rocks. I love both of you so much, and I will miss you more than any words can convey. As a famous philosopher once said, “Sweep me up.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Joe Luther 2025

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