Anthology Complex, M.B. Julien [best e reader for academics TXT] 📗

angry and begins to shoot at me again even though I've already fallen to the ground. Even though I'm completely helpless.

 

Eventually he runs out of ammunition. The man with the gun walks closer to me and stands over my body, and he sees that I am still alive. He is in disbelief. The man who is laughing stops laughing and also comes closer to me, and then he kneels down to whisper something in my ear. He tells me that the Lord has spoken.

 

Chapter 24:

ECHOES FROM THE SUN

 

There is a story of a group of people who have spent their entire lives in an underground cave and their knowledge is limited only to what they can see and hear, and then one day they are let out of the underground cave and for the first time they see the Sun. They see powerful rays of light and trees and birds and realize that there was so much more to learn. Maybe you know this story.

 

At night, some of us gaze at the dark sky and wonder what is beyond what we can see and what we can comprehend as human beings. Things like God and Satan, if there is life elsewhere. Even if we are one day able to see and comprehend these things, we will have to accept the fact that there is still even more to discover. No matter how much you think you may know, you will never know it all.

 

However, one might argue that because knowledge presumably has no limits, it therefore cannot be compared or measured to or by anything.

 

One person might know that an object's mass plays a role in how strong that object's gravitational pull will be and another person might not, but because there is so much to know one might also say that regardless of how much more knowledgeable the first person is than the second person, both individuals are equally unintelligent. Or equally unintelligent. This is why a wise man will tell you he's a fool.

 

There is a theory that a single cell can represent, or is, a universe, and that a universe can represent, or is, a single cell. The basic fundamentals of the idea are influenced by significance and perception. The human body is comprised of cells that will help form a body part or an organ, and these parts of the body will help form systems such as the reproductive system or the respiratory system, and these systems will help maintain a functional organism.

 

Likewise, the universe is comprised with many similarities. There are planets. Cells. There is a star with a mass that is great enough to have a dominant gravitational pull and force these nearby planets to revolve around it, such a system is called a solar system. Organs. There are many solar systems throughout space, and the compilation of these solar systems form galaxies. Body systems.

 

Furthermore, many galaxies form a universe. Organisms. A universe is followed by an omniverse, which is all possible universes, and who knows for how long this can go on, however if you tweak your perception, imagine that a cell in your body is one universe. All these cells help make up your heart, just like all these planets help make up a solar system.

 

If we were to shrink ourselves down to a size where just one of our cells were more significant, or in other words bigger to us, we might find that the place we are in follows the same exact standards as the place we were when we were normally sized. With this in mind, is it logical to assume that everything is the same? That without the perception and significance that is constructed by the human brain, a single cell is the actually identical in every property to a universe.

 

That even if you meet a giant who is a million times bigger than you, it means nothing because there is another giant who is a billion times bigger than the giant who is a million times bigger than you, and to him you are both small and stupid just the same. And then you find out there is a giant who is a trillion times bigger...

 

Anyway it goes on and on and on. Maybe this is all just the rambling of a part of me that has lost its sanity as this has happened to me before, but I've found that even in falsehood you can dissect some parts of truth.

 

Often times our dreams are never resolved. We might find ourselves running through a storm but we never find out why. We might be searching for our first class on the first day of school but we wake up before we see if we find it or not. We might be parked in front of a house but we don't know what or who we are waiting for, why we are waiting there and how long we've been waiting there.

 

A long time ago I used to have these dreams where I was kept in solitary confinement in a prison. In a cold, dark corner in a small piece of the universe, I have to spend these days of penitence in a penitentiary.

 

Time goes by and I suffer. Sometimes a guard will walk by and I ask him why I have to suffer, and he tells me that some of us are just meant to suffer for the things we've done. Sometimes I ask him how I can make things right, and he tells me that the only thing I can do is offer the people I've wronged my suffrage.

 

The one thing I can't solve, the one thing I can't figure out about those damn dreams is what crime I committed to be put in there in the first place.

 

Two things that have always fascinated me in my life are warfare and prison. Not necessarily the soldiers or the prisoners, but the idea of sending one group of humans to kill another group of humans, the idea to segregate certain people in compliance to a few rules on a few pieces of paper. The one especially interesting aspect, or question, of war, is who exactly is at war? You can have a war with several countries, several people or even a war with yourself; a mental struggle.

 

The Civil War was a war where one nation fought amongst itself. Who is at war, who is being imprisoned. Once a prisoner becomes institutionalized, once they become so comfortable to the society within the prison walls, when you set that prisoner free, you may actually be imprisoning him in the outside world. Just like that piece of rock in space, a prisoner sometimes wants to stay a prisoner. Maybe that's why most of them end up going back to prison after they are freed.

 

On the news they say they caught the person who murdered that man not too far from my apartment building. It was over some drug situation, and the perpetrator is going to be locked away for a long time.

 

The victim was intoxicated at the time of his death, and the assailant was caught and it is speculated that after being shown that they had forensic evidence on him, he confessed and provided details about others in his organization in an attempt to reduce his prison sentence.

 

One thing we will all come to realize eventually is that we will always want more until we decide we want nothing. We are always waiting for our plates to be filled, but even when they are there is always an empty side-dish.

 

We tell ourselves we'll be happy and content when we get that job. When we fall in love and get married. When we have a house. When we have children. The thing is it's never enough. It will never be enough. Not until enough is enough.

 

Chapter 25:

THE MOTH EFFECT

 

I open the front door to the apartment building and the Sun's rays hit me as if I had been in darkness for years. I notice that the plants are beginning to grow, and I can only hope that they grow properly. I start to think about how the Sun's rays, as powerful as they may be, how they don't reach the garden, and how sad the zinnias that were there before must have felt.

 

In the distance I see Mary getting out of a parked car with a bouquet of red roses, and this image reminds me that it's Mother's Day, but I've never figured Mary for a mother. Maybe the roses have nothing to do with the holiday.

 

Mary passes by me with a fur-coat that probably cost an animal its life. Insult to death. I'd like to think that the animals that are killed for their fur were primarily killed for their nutritional value. There can't be any righteousness in killing an animal simply for its properties in appearance. Only to gain in the selling of fur or leather.

 

I can also tell that she's drunk when she walks pass me, and that she's not conscious enough to notice that her driver is yelling out her name because she forgot something. I end up having to help her in that department.

 

Lynne told me that red roses symbolize love and romance. These red roses remind me of Maria, but in particular, they remind me about two dreams I had about her a couple of years after we met. Maria and I both worked at the same place, and often times we would end up working at the same times. I usually walked to work, but one day when I was halfway there to work, it started to rain. It really started to pour. Maria, who drove to work, saw me walking and she stopped and gave me a ride to work.

 

We had been together for at least two years and then one night I have this dream. I'm walking down stairs. I hear this woman sitting at the bottom of a staircase crying. I ask her what's wrong and she looks up at me with big watery eyes.

 

The scene shifts like dreams like to do, and we are inside of a house. I look at her hand and I see a tattoo. I ask her what it is, and she tells me it's a butterfly in the shape of a heart. I ask her why, and she says to me, "Because it's through fate that we find our soulmate." I didn't have as good a memory then and I didn't start writing down my dreams yet so I can't remember the dream so well, but I can remember what she said about finding your soulmate with the help of fate clearly.

 

The butterfly effect theory basically states that one event, no matter how big or how small, can effectively influence the course of the future. One question often associated with this theory asks if the flap of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world can cause a natural disaster in another part of the world.

 

I gather that her tattoo meant that regardless of how random or senseless some things may be, coincidence has nothing to do with us finding our one true love. Our soulmate. That we find the ones we are suppose to live the rest of our lives with through fate.

 

The next thing I know, I'm lying in bed with the woman. Sometime later there is a banging on the door, and all I can hear is the name Diane ringing through my head. The woman gets up out of bed and goes to see who it is, and it's Maria on the other side of the door.

 

A few months later after having that dream, I have it again, but different things happen. It's the same woman in the same house, except this time I don't cheat on Maria. I tell Diane that I have to leave, that I'm not attracted to her flame, and she becomes furious, but before I go to turn away I notice that her tattoo is