The Astronaut

---

I saw the Switch the other day—a circular square of a thing. Only fiction is capable of assigning a description to it.

We stood in pairs side-by-side, waiting for the world to turn yellow. A familiar tune plays softly in the background. The referendum awaits a decision. A casters poll. An atoll, a shipwreck.

Professor came in with his shades as if a benefactor to prudence. Gaiety, a wipe of his lenses, is an err to comparison particle for particle. Serene fear. Brave coward. We knew that this is the end. No matter what he says. Forgive my picture before the frame, and if the glass breaks, to hell with it. For laws are but a shadow in Plato's cave. Our cave, for an end, is the beginning.

And in this very cave, we sat without reflections. Light a figment of our imaginations. 'Maybe we should just go to bed and leave it till the morning?' said the Professor. So we waited and waited. They say that when God made us and all the creatures, he quickly loathed the sight of them. Not their creations but their patterns. Their vulnerabilities to deceptions peak at a quarter to two, not night nor day, has met their coated rays in cones of simple lies, rumor, tales told as folklore or on the cushions of a couch—the convex edges of an hourglass.

Behold the Switch, jolly creatine. Such power harnesses the sun. Trust me. Not just one. More like a thousand. More like ten-thousand. More like fifty-thousand. Alas, oh goodness me, for the fate of the Universe rests in my hands. To suffer is to live. To live is to die. Penchant is Professor's desire to save the world, nay, to find a reason to design a construct made not of plastic nor stone, but obsidian. Warnings mounted hoar on the Switch's surface, essential and significant like a potlatch beneath the stars. Aura lights of magnetic fields dance around it like whispers in the wind—slow and steady.

Rise the flags and set the sail West. Destination impedes stipulation for any soul capable of reconsidering dust that clouds the sky first maroon, then beige, then yellow again. Combine it all into one, and darkness coats the perimeter of skin. Cast the anchor up to a divine gravity and let it set in a pompous thump. The waves of the ocean fall inwards upon themselves. 

To stumble is to sin as a deed is to resemblance. History permits discussion. A cage rattles as the angels battle, in their mind as angels, in our eyes as devils. Professor did not care. His righteous stone made of heart advocates to keep life rolling as if nothing ever happened. As if I should put myself in the savor position, a questioned sentiment, a tale, a dye. So we sat, banging stone-to-stone, tinkering, and kindling and spinning flax to string, wood to suit the pallet.

Being near the farm, the house becomes larger.

Silk roads and spices. Abandoned churches. Practiced virtue. Ill demise. Not black nor white, but the same hoar warnings glued on the surface of the Switch. I am awaiting some form of its touch. 'You could just leave it be…' claimed Professor, ferociously impudent as a cattle is to a sheep. Or maybe a hero as waiting for his chance? Save it.

Centuries passed. The cave has turned to a pool of dead animals and plants waiting for their moment to shine. Steam percussions roll off the blades of tracks as powder combusts, the pipes run gasoline-fueled sentiments and crock pots that boil faster and faster, making a good meal. 

Bottles filled with wine stain feet purple. Baskets rim of cotton. Scopes Monkey Trial. Darwin's Beagle. The spots on a ladybug near a rose nearly vanished. An oven meets the cradle. It spreads faster than a storm only feet away. Compounded a sight to behold curation as valuable as gold deemed nickel, fatalism, as fate plays no games. Perhaps we are going too fast.

Words have power once power has a story, from the tubes of dry paste squeezing behind the commotion of piety and fear. And as if a promulgation not to infinity but sanctity: 'Let it be!' says Professor. Hoar-ish. And so that way it shall be, for now. Equilibrium casts more than a glimmer of doubt: nay, the meticulous articulation to what is real and right. 

The exploding head of Raphaelesque canvases a house of mirrors. Joyless masquerade balls and last suppers before the goodbyes, masks wore inverted, tasteless emotions, manual grit. Labor. Oh, labor. Cycling back and forth, the wind of a tornado. Not a merry-go-round but a rotary dial. An omnibus of layers impairs the judgment as the shackles of determinism slip away. To have a dream but to live on to see the subversion.

Towards a higher form, a prelude awaits—gravity weakness. Tales halt in the middle. Gaseous greener. A casters rebellion. Set forth thy dreams in righteous glory and sink the deepest to the sky. Our sky turned yellow inadmissible to the number ninety-two—a periodic table sum. Attune the sycophantic veil as to fodder. A deceive act is this, one that cannot be without a tale. Consider it an Astronaut's perspicacity or maybe, perhaps, just as a platitude peruse a ruse. A premonition to disaster, the fetters weaken. And as they do, the eyes begin to see. The world we live in is meant not to be.

So, comes in the Professor as if a promulgator to everything holy; a bibulous imbibe. A blithe. In his sullen coat hanging inches from the floor, he began his panegyric, an ode to humanity: the short echoes of his voice, the lyrical cries of desperation. He sang of birds and tales of love—the moments in between the notes, not in melody nor rhyme, but as though suddenly pious, a humble surrender. And with enthusiasm, he spoke. He is reminding me of what there is still left to see. Behold the triumphant glory when loved ones return; the sight of a dove. Raven or crow. In a crabs shell that finds another home only to realize that there isn't any sand.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world monocular—cyclopes of emotions. For it says my name and my name only, coated as if placed by a higher deity. As if constructed by one. Off. Off! I must turn it off! Sullen. Titular. Austere. Arable? Perhaps we'd start over new? But what would change? What would make the shadows look more like rabbits and not like bears?

Here is where our story begins. The day causation found itself in the inevitable. And on this day that is like no other, falls a reader on the other end of the page. Hello, dear reader. It is nice to meet you. Do conceive me please a notion of will. Whether in a pentameter, or a poem, I do not care. Please do not consider it a representation of my qualm, for my fingers are an inch away.

You may stop and wonder what about falls in this Astronaut's rear? What about his life pain errs an act of Universal demolition? Not pride, but the line. Thick, hoarish, and sadly semipermeable. A child's cry. A tremor. Orwell's hum rings more accurate than the sunrise. All animals are equal, but some animals are better. None are the same, and none can be different—warrens to a den. Blood turns oddly pink when mixed with water, blue with tears of mortal, yellow with sentience. And as I awakened feeling as though I've transformed into a giant insect, danger crept where it wanted to.     

'Transform thy perspective!' says he, with a glistening sweet spot in his eyes, velvet and rounded with the right slightly weaker than the left. 'I cannot!', said I. 'The world has forever disappointed itself. Think about it for a moment.'

As time went on, we thought and thought, trying to compile the insufficient data for an answer with meaning. On one particular galaxy originated Man, which should make it different from the others? Right? Wrong. Centuries past. There is still insufficient data for an answer with meaning. So we waited. And we waited.

'Hunter, listen to me!' said the Professor, pacing around in circles.

'What do you want?'

'Did it happen on that day? More specifically, did it happen when you acquired the Switch?'

'I didn't acquire it; it acquired me. And yes, presumably, it did.'

'Tell me more about it.'

The day causation found itself in the inevitable was when humanity deciphered what makes their methods accurate. We call it 'science' as madness to the process. When something abstract in the world of causation becomes concrete in the inevitable world, or when something concrete in cause-and-effect becomes abstract in fatalism, fiction turns to nonfiction. The world of causation pertains to the entire sum: every particle, every void. The causes-and-effects have humans to choose what they can and cannot accomplish. What occurs inevitably rings a similar tune, with the only difference being the will and fatalism as the simple notion that time travel is, impossible?

Discernment dawns on those who question humanity's freedom, and to that, an admission made. Shadows are the same as illusions only when illusions are shadows. In other words, a butterfly does not choose to form or crystallize; the decision of the crab for a new shell is in tune with nature, not apart from it. We are moving on.

'What brings you meaning?' he asked.

'The absence of meaning.'

'So, the negation?'

'It's not the same thing.'

'How so?'

'Since when has this become a philosophy?'

'Let me tell why the absence of meaning is the same as no meaning.'

'Pass. Plus, I already know what you are going to say, and I have one.'

'Have one what?'

'A meaning.'

'So if you do, why end it?'

'Because "absence" is not the same as "none." An absence implies a presence.' 

'Shadows are only to be seen with light.'

'But what about illusions?'

'Isn't it inevitable?'

More a product of fate. In this cave, we sat with reflections— light a figment of reality. 'Maybe we should just go to bed and leave it till the morning?'. Alas, we waited and waited.

On the visiplate, what we saw were black and white images of people waving. They waved and waved to welcome us in silent song, with smiles, children playing, ales and brews. It was an invitation to see life before the storm that leads right after to a cold hoarish floor. It leads to a picture of a mother struggling to feed her kin. The Face of War. But is this behind us? Surly now that more centuries have passed, Space remains Space. An intergalactic diaspora faces its challenges. Being near the Star, the planet becomes larger. Galactic highways and gems. Abandoned clusters. Practiced virtue. Ill demise. Not black nor white, but the same hoar warnings glued on the surface of the Switch. I am awaiting some form of touch. 'You could just leave it be…' claimed he, ferociously impudent as a cattle is to a sheep. Or maybe a hero. Waiting for his chance. Maybe. Unexpectedly, a feeling of guilt began to overpower the insides of my quarry. A churn of internal ravish. Perhaps a sense of nervousness, no doubt. They say that when it happened, the start of it all, expansion, created possibilities. It gave choices, chances; the movements let us travel to a dimension permanently, stay there. And so, we sat, to the vain realization that as time went on, nothing changed.

'So, what happens now?' asked Professor in a tone resembling a child.

'I guess that it is finally time.'

'What do you think will happen?'

'Nothing. Nothing will happen. Isn't that the point?'

'I guess. But would it not be boring?'

'We won't be able to perceive boredom, silly.'

'Fine. Won't it be dark?'

'We won't be able to perceive dark, either.'

'Could Nothing be Something?'

'Of course, that's the way it is now. That "something" has done itself, Justice.'

'Justice? Save it, Hunter. Who are you to speak of Justice?'

'I am the Astronaut. You should be calling me God.'

'Are you God?'

'Maybe I am, maybe I'm not.'

'Then, what are you?'

'Human… I think.'

'Human. And what do all humans have in common? And do not give me the typical answer you once would. If anything, the time you spent waiting and waiting, thinking and debating, does it not mean a single thing to you?'

'Anybody else would've done the same. You would have too, also.'

'Well, how do you know?'

If we could decipher what unites us despite our variances, a wormhole, not just to another galaxy but as connexion to something unique, something that could justify the existence of that which knows that it exists, then it might save us. Not everyone finds love. Not everyone has the same codes running through their programs. Eukaryotes? Differences in energy. Cells divide, mutated at the most random of times. Variations and inheritances abide before selection. It appears that the only thing that unites us is death. And also dreams. But these, too, fade away. 

Maybe time will stretch when the Switch flips, seconds away. Perhaps it would feel like centuries all over again? Maybe hitting the reset button is not a bad idea. If anything arises in mind, it is now the time to speak or forever hold your peace. What could make the bears look more like rabbits? For they will never be rabbits and vice versa. It remains a secret why the Switch switched 'Off.' As expected, the sky took on a yellow shade, and the ego became lost. Voices heard, two to be specific. They debated. And what those voices discussed was how to prevent this from happening again. One froze. The other shuddered. And the very last thing that they said together, at the same time, at the same place, wherever and whenever it was does not matter. They noted that humanity rests on a single premise—that of the ability to feel a sense of Compassion. But how do we know?