The Hero

I’ve always wondered how I would react if properly tested.

Would I turn into one of those heroes everyone cheers for at the cinema?

The one who fights back with vengeance, the one who faces every adversity with a cool shrug of his shoulders and ends up with the girl, the money and redemption in spades?

Well, let’s call a spade a spade, shall we: I’m not a hero.

Because no hero, throughout human history, has ever found himself curled up on a bathroom floor, soaked in his own sweat and anxiety. Unable to move even the smallest limb. All because of a simple letter.

But that’s me.

If my life were a movie, at best I would be a supporting character.

I’m not strong enough to carry a movie on my own.

Three hours ago I was sort of okay, trotting along.

Two hours later I had a gun to the back of my head.

That wasn’t good.

And now, now I’m here, lying on the bathroom floor, bruises all over my aching body, reveling in my own pity.

Thinking this is it.

There’s no silver lining.

I close my swollen eyes and push my palms harder into the reddened sockets that normally harbor them. The pain only provides me with a brief moment of relief from my throbbing headache.

I don’t care about the bruises or the headache. It’s in my belly my true problem resides, an all-consuming worry I’ve been nurturing for almost my entire adult life.

The letter isn’t unexpected.

I’ve been dreading its arrival for weeks.

Some of my friends subscribe to the theory of positivity; you are what you think and all that nonsense. They claim you can shed illness and gain wealth just by sending out the right thoughts.

As far as I can tell most of them have only gained weight and shed hair, but if they’re correct I might have brought this on myself.

I clamber onto my knees.

I’m not handling life the way I’m supposed to. I’m not a role model, not someone people should look up to.

I was always so clever at school; one of those kids the teachers thought would score a good job and live happily ever after.

How wrong they were.

Admittedly my first job was a touchdown. It was great to be the up and coming prince of an organization. But that was it. My career never took off the way it was supposed to. It turned out I lacked a vital ingredient to climb the corporate ladder – ambition.

Happiness never came sailing into my lap either – cause I lacked that crucial ability of positive thinking.

I soon realized I could live without happiness though. Most people do. It’s why they keep buying flat screen TVs, renovate their houses and tally up their Instagram likes.

Like everyone else I’ve learned how to let random endorphin-teasers keep the growling beast in my stomach at bay.

Until everything changed.

Until the menu became pointless.

I pull my body up into an upright position. If this really were a movie this would be where the music would build up to its crescendo. This would be the monumental turning point where I would face my fears and take a stand.

Cinematically speaking, I would look into a cracked mirror and see a different person looking back at me.

I would look past fear and realize I’d been worrying about something there was absolutely no need to worry about.

Instead I see the same anxious wreck I’ve greeted every morning for the last few months.

Why the hell is it so hard to be a hero in your own life story? I don’t recollect ever watching Rambo downing a jar of antidepressants before drawing first blood, and Tom Cruise never over-analyzed the masculinity of his voice when screaming ‘show me the money’ to a floor full of resentful colleagues. Rambo and Cruise did what was required of them in the situation.

They didn’t overthink things.

And that’s what I need to stop doing.

I need to rise to the occasion.

I need to start treating my life as a movie where I’m the Goddamn hero. I need to start ignoring my natural instincts and instead ask what Rambo and Cruise would do, if ever put in my shoes.

I let the thought linger for a moment.

Rambo would probably grunt a bit, then go out shooting something up before disappearing into the woods. It’s the middle of winter, it’s freezing cold, I’m not going for Rambo’s option.

Cruise, however, is not coming to the rescue either. The guy is quite frankly a bit of a lunatic. He was invited to Oprah Winfrey, and instead of opening up sharing a personal story and a crocodile tear, like every other sane and calculating guest with a team of highly paid advisors would do, he started jumping on her couch like a monkey.

If I started taking cues from Cruise’s playbook I would probably be admitted somewhere I wouldn’t want to be admitted.

So what should I do then? Maybe I should write my own storyline? Create a new type of hero, one who doesn’t act in a predictable Hollywood manner. A hero so flawed he would make Kevin Spacey come across as a gentleman and Donald Trump a humble diplomat.

I wipe my tears. Time to face reality.

I pick up the letter from the washbasin and open it.

A year ago our family doctor compared the stages of my daughter’s illness to the lifecycle of an insect.

Her cancer was at the caterpillar stage; it was hungry and growing, making itself comfortable in her body. The upside was that it was easy to spot.

Easy to kill.

It would be worse if it reached the pupa stage, the resting phase where it could start changing and hiding.

But what we really didn’t want was for it to eventually turn into a butterfly, because once a butterfly takes to its wings…

As the tears start flowing down my cheeks, I think back on this morning’s events.

She’s such a Tomboy my daughter, so full of optimism despite her ailments. At her request we went to the local paintball center.

I thought she would be an easy match, but she got me good. At one stage she even snuck up behind me and put the muzzle of her paintball gun to my head.

I was waiting for her to pull the trigger and accidentally dropped my gun to the floor.

Instead she said, without an ounce of disappointment in her voice, ‘Dad, never give up.’

Then my little butterfly walked away…

Man Flu

I used to go to the gym to feel good. Now I go to the hairdresser, or to the dentist for a quick clean. I guess that means I’m getting old. You don’t really need to be careful if your car only has ten K on the clock, but once you pass fifty you need to start following a regular maintenance schedule, change outdated parts. Etcetera. Etcetera.

The New smell is gone, and it’s not coming back. It takes time to get started in the morning. Sometimes it’s touch and go.

You just have to turn the key and pray.

Maybe it sounds stupid comparing my body to a car. But that’s what my doctor has told me to start doing. “If you buy cheap oil, the engine won’t last,” he says. Yeah, a little bit late for that tidbit of information. I’ve been drinking the cheap stuff for years. Now, my left arm feeling completely numb from the shoulder down, I wish I’d picked from the expensive shelf more often; the craft beers and aged whiskey, not the Lagers and Cleanskins.

Back when I was twelve I would have viewed this limp arm as a golden opportunity, now I catch myself thinking I’m having a stroke. I’ve seen the zombies doing laps around the dog park. Some look barely older than me, dragging one foot like it’s overslept the other. A limp arm above it, squeezed so tightly to the hip it looks like it’s concealing a weapon.

I sometimes nod to them, but they rarely nod back. I don’t blame them.

“You okay?” my wife asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. My wife’s the last person I would tell if I was having a stroke. I could cut both legs clean off with a chainsaw and she would still accuse me of having the man flu. If I got a coin every time I’ve been told women have a higher pain threshold than men, I would be pregnant with coins by now.

“You look odd,” she says.

“Is one part of my face sagging? Aren’t my words making any sense?” I fire off in a rapid voice. I’ve read the ‘what-to-do-if-you’re-having-a-stroke-instructions’. I know that time is of importance.

“You never make sense. You always mumble too much,” she says, rolling over. Then the snoring engulfs our bedroom again.

I touch my face with my still functioning right hand. Run my palm over the three-day stubble. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but it feels good to be proactive. I follow up by shaking my limp left hand, trying to get some blood flowing.

Blood flowing….a pang of fear races through my head.

It always wakes up before me. Always!

I lift the doona, using my good arm this time. I don’t trust my bad one for this job. It’s too important. There’s too much at stake.

“Please wake up,” I plead inside my head, “please, pretty please,” but there’s no response.

Suddenly I don’t care if I’m having a stroke. Who cares if I have to drag one leg around like a log or half my face is about to look like a botched Botox experiment; the stakes have just been raised.

I pull the doona back over my chest. It’s winter, and cold is not my friend.

I close my eyes. I need to conjure some dirty thoughts fast.

A few seconds later I’ve managed to assemble an acceptable image in my head. Then my wife farts and I have to start all over again.

For a moment I consider giving her a soft elbow to the back for not helping out, but then I remember my left arm is still limp from the shoulder down. If I roll over and bump her with my right elbow it could be viewed as an invitation, an invitation I’m in no position to deliver on.

So instead I utilise my eyelid muscles to block out the rest of the world, concentrating on reassembling that image my wife just ruined. Who was the actress again? Damn, I knew her name two minutes ago. Now I’ve forgotten. She was in that movie… Oh, this is driving me crazy. I know the name. It’s on the tip of my tongue, my tongue that now has a slight taste of metal. What is the taste of metal a symptom of again? Alzheimer’s. Fucking Alzheimer’s!

It suddenly hits me that I could be having a stroke and Alzheimer’s at the same time. How bloody unfair. FML.

Charlize Theron. That’s the name I was looking for. Reassembling image….

Is that a tongue in my ear? I open my left eyelid. Tilt my head to the side and stare straight into a set of two excited eyes.

They don’t belong to a human. “Get out of my ear,” I say, pushing my little Shih Tzu Maltese away, demonstrating that I’m the alpha dog in our flock. “Don’t lick my feet either,” I say as my harmless and offended dog waddles down to the end of the bed.

“Can you be quiet,” my wife says.

I shake my head. Here I am, dying of Alzheimer’s and a stroke, and my wife has the audacity to tell me to shut up.

“Did you just shake your head at me?”

“No, it was for the dog,” I say.

“Hmm,” she says, closing her eyes.

Emboldened by dodging a bullet I ask in my best dressed voice, “Who plays Charlize Theron’s sister in that movie in the desert again? The one who looks like you?”

“Seriously?”

My wife doesn’t even bother opening her eyes when replying. That can’t be good I conclude, so I follow up, “just reminiscing about good movies. Exercising the old grey matter.”

“Natalie Portman,” she finally says, “and she looks nothing like me. By the way: stop bringing your laptop to bed. You were chewing on it last night.”

I look over at my limp left arm. It’s got an imprint of something. Looks like the letters H and P. Then I taste my tongue. It’s really more a plasticky taste than metal.

Well, two down, one to go. Oh no, that doesn’t sound good. I close my eyes.

Charlize Theron. Natalie Portman. Charlize Theron. Natalie Portman….

And before I know it I’m back in business. Even my left arm is waking up. I use it to tap my wife gently on the shoulder.

“Fuck off,” she says.

Coming up with book titles

I pull out my earbuds and study my watch. It’s a fancy one. Too much bling for me really, but my wife has instructed me to stop dressing as a kid and grow up. I blew her off of course, saying even Mark Zuckerberg wears hoodies these days, and he’s a freaking billionaire.

I thought I made a solid argument.

“He’s thirty. You’re not thirty,” my wife replied.

I slip the earbuds back in. I’m on the train on my way to work. Saying we’re packed like sardines inside a tin can would be an understatement. It feels like I’m surrounded by a dozen male Hollywood producers. Some guy is pressing his crotch against my ass, which is kind of impressive considering I haven’t completed a leg day at the gym for more than a decade and most undies feel baggy after one wash. I can only imagine how the women in our carriage must be feeling. Not the best way to start off your day; getting gang-dry-humped by a bunch of strangers in suits, so busy with their phones that they don’t even attempt to maintain eye contact. If I were a bit more entrepreneurially inclined I would have viewed this as a business opportunity: Why chase ambulances when you got a carriage full of lawsuits right in front of you?

Unfortunately I am neither a lawyer nor an entrepreneur, and one thing is for sure: I’m never going back to uni. I prefer to work; to pretend I already know stuff instead of pretending to learn stuff.

I close my eyes and listen to the Mindfulness Podcast I’ve been subscribing to for the last week or so. The sales pitch on iTunes promised that I could reduce my stress levels by up to fifty percent simply focusing on my own breathing. One week in, all I’ve achieved is realizing how badly out of shape I am. I sound like a deflating whoopee cushion every time I take a breath, which should come as no surprise since I’m more of an elusive benefactor than an active member of my local gym. And although I like to take walks to the pub, I rarely run. I’ve succumbed to the theory that my heart is like an engine or a hardrive or anything else really that has lots of moving parts. A beat is a beat. It doesn’t matter whether they’re fast or slow.

Best to ration, I’ve rationalized.

I sigh. Turns out I’m not patient enough to listen to my own breathing for more than two stops. The Asian Yoga music doesn’t exactly help. It just makes my head heavy and fills it with images of me on a beach in Koh Samui with a Strawberry Margarita in each hand, instead of swollen sweat glands from the fear of accidentally bumping into someone’s ass #metoocitycommute.

I wriggle my hands in front of my chest and manage to shut down the Mindfulness app and open Audible. I’m sure it has something I can waste my hard-earned money on.

Then I start browsing the Top 10 Best Seller List. “The Girl on the Train. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The Girl..”

What the fudge? Have I just stumbled across the secret to a bestseller; the word ‘girl’ randomly inserted into a sentence on a book cover title?

A brilliant idea stumbles into my slightly greying matter. “What if I swapped girl with guy?”

My eyes dart across the other sardines inside our carriage and I quickly count half a dozen men with rather indecipherable tattoos that could very well be dragons for all I know – and I’m on a freaking train for Krishna’s sake! I quickly realize that I could be standing inside a virtual cryptocurrency gold mine for generating overhyped book title ideas.

“The Guy on the Delayed Train.” “The Guy With the Anchor Tattoo.” I run title scenarios through my head as soon as I spot them, but none of them seem to carry the same pizzazz as dragons and girls.

So I eventually succumb to the peer pressure of the masses and click buy on a book called ‘The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye’. Might as well check out what all the fuss about girls is. I already know it will be a rip off; the guy who wrote the first book in the series, ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’, is long dead. He died of a massive heart attack just weeks out from publishing his first book.

Some would say that was bad luck. I just think it is a great argument for self-publishing. People should never die waiting for hospital treatment or editorial proof reading of their fourth draft. Life is simply too short for that kind of patience.

The train stops and we all sway like a cake of jelly during an earthquake. Then half the carriage vanishes and my odds of reaching Mindfulness Nirvana improves from 1 to a billion – to 1 to slightly less than a billion.

I take the opportunity to sit down in a seat reserved for handicapped people.

It’s not that I like to break rules. I just sometimes think there are too many of them.

So if I ever get another son I’ve decided to call him Bidden.

I reckon that would be a great name to have growing up.

Skateboards forbidden. Chewing gum forbidden. That’s forbidden!

With a name like that he would have the potential to float through life like a plastic bag in the Ganges River. Untouchable.

Unbreakable.

Making a lasting impact.

My great rebellion, however, is to occupy a handicap seat on half empty commuter train. And the truth is that I will get up as soon anyone carrying more than top up groceries staggers into the carriage. I might look tough now, crossing my legs in the handicap seat, acting like I own this carriage, but I’m really a big softie.

I close my eyes and listen to the soothing voice of the narrator reading ‘The Girl Who Bla Blah blah’. I’ve already forgotten the rest of the title because my mind is always racing with a million competing thoughts:

Did I take out the bin last night?

Why do I always say stupid stuff?

What should I do with my life?

Are there aliens walking among us?

Well, that last one was a bit far-fetched, even for me. But you get the idea.

And suddenly it hits me like the paranoia after pressing ‘reply all’ to an email that was most definitely not meant to be a ‘reply all’ email.

I have actually achieved Mindfulness.

My mind is completely full.

Just wish it were full of better sounding book titles.

A Fragile World – available for preorder now.

Step into the light

We all grew up watching the X-men. Hoping that one of us would wake up one day with special powers; the ability to control fire, fly like an eagle or squash a car into a tiny Rubrics cube with our bare hands. It never happened of course.

Something else happened however.

Something no one could have predicted.

The light came.

And with the light our world would change forever.

*****

Imogen peered down the street, her eyes consumed by resentment. Nothing had changed. The row of houses looked as mundane as it had the last time she visited her parents. Manicured gardens. Freshly painted white picket fences.

“I hate this place,” she said, looking over at her husband Tom.

Tom just nodded. Then he put the stick back in drive and approached the cul-de-sac like an overcautious mine sweeper.

“We leave in the morning,” Imogen followed up.

“Sure,” Tom answered. He wasn’t about to argue. He’d always gotten along with Imogen’s parents, but the events of the last few weeks had changed things. It had forced most people to re-evaluate everything they’d believed to be true.

And what came out on the other side wasn’t always pleasant.

The global tech behemoth Tom had used to work for had once spent a small fortune on a management program called Break-Out. It hadn’t exactly been a resounding success. Tom had been part of the lucky first group of executives being shipped off to a mountain hideaway for a weekend of coal-walking in the pursuit of finding meaning beyond numbers. Well intended, the program had yielded some highly unexpected results. Tom’s boss, Mr Asshole, had divorced his wife two weeks after the getaway and there was a rumour he was now Ms Asshole. Out of the twelve people going away, only three remained at the company four months later. It was truly a break-out. And it had taught Tom and the other executives a valuable lesson; enlightenment wasn’t always good.

“Did you bring any alcohol?” Tom asked.

Imogen let out a laugh. “Like I would show up emptyhanded.”

An hour later the table was set and Tom was sharing a beer with his father in law, Charles, out on the porch. It was a cool night. Not a cloud on the sky. Lots of stars however.

Lots.

“I don’t know what to do,” Charles said, rolling a thick cigar between his age-worn fingers, teasing Tom’s nostrils.

“What do you feel like doing?” Tom said.

“Leaving.”

Tom looked away. Then he said, “because there’s somewhere you want to be, or because you don’t want to be here anymore?”

Charles smiled, blowing some cold air out of his nostrils. Then he put the cigar back in the breast pocket of his dinner jacket. “We should join the girls.”

The dinner went about as awkwardly as expected. Nobody wanted to bring up what was on everyone’s mind. They all knew nothing good could come from it.

After dinner Tom joined Charles back out on the porch. This time Charles lit up his cigar, and offered one to Tom.

“This one of your Cubans?” Tom asked.

Charles smiled. “Always thought these would be shared celebrating the news of a grandchild on the way.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, before taking a deep breath. The irony was not beyond him; scholars at NASA had long theorised that the best way to travel through space would be in a cigar shaped vessel. Such a shape would minimize friction and the risk of getting struck by meteors.

“What do you make of all this?” Charles said, waving his arms as he peered up at the stars above them.

Tom shrugged. “I guess we had it coming.”

“You really think so?”

Tom nodded.

Charles coughed into his hand. “I never questioned it, you know.”

“Questioned what?”

“The scripture. It’s all there, if you look.”

“Let it go, Charles.”

Charles shook his head. “You know the line as well as me; God said Let There Be Light, and there was light.”

“God was supposed to have said that on the first day, Charles. He didn’t create the stars or the sun until the fourth. There’s your logical breach there – on day one,” Tom said.

“What if he did create the light before the sun and the stars? What if that’s the light we’ve been seeing?”

“Let it go,” Tom said.

“I can’t.”

****

Three years ago a panel of our smartest scientists estimated that there was a fifty percent probability that our world was a simulation, created by some super intelligent alien race. Three years ago we had hardly started to scratch the surface of what was possible with virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

I wonder what those scientists’ estimate would be now.

If any of them were still alive I would have asked them.

****

Tom sat down beside his wife, Imogen, in the bedroom where she had evolved from toddler to teenager to young woman. Her parents hadn’t done much to it over the years. Their house had been extended in almost every direction. They had built new bathrooms, a summer garden, and a study. But Imogen’s bedroom stood completely untouched, like it had been stowed away in a time capsule from the eighties.

“Did you ever bring any boyfriends up here?” Tom asked.

Imogen laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Tom sighed. “I think your dad is struggling.”

“Of course he’s struggling. He’s spent his entire life preaching the Gospel. Now that’s all gone.”

Tom nodded. “I really opened Pandora’s box, didn’t I.”

“It’s not your fault Tom,” Imogen said, putting a comforting hand on Tom’s left shoulder.

“Why does it feel that way then?” Tom said. Then he continued, “I never wanted this, you know. Despite what your father thinks.”

“You don’t choose the conclusions, Tom. It would have been nice if Earth was at the centre of our universe, but Copernicus couldn’t close his eyes once he realised this this to be untrue.”

“Copernicus was wrong too. He thought the sun was at the centre of our universe.”

“And that’s science. Our conclusions should evolve as we learn more. To claim that a theory is correct just because the majority believes so…” Imogen shook her head. “Heresy drives progress. Always have,” she continued.

“But this is different. I’ve ruined so many lives.”

“You’ve opened their eyes. That can’t be a bad thing.”

“You don’t think so?” Tom asked.

Imogen shook her head. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

Tom shot her a short smile. He hoped he would. Then he closed his eyes.

***

Tom woke before the rest of the house. He’d always been an early riser, even in his college years. In press interviews he’d been known to claim he valued time too highly to waste it sleeping, but the truth was that he just didn’t need much. These days it was increasingly tempting to stay under the doona however, to curl up and shut reality out for as long as possible. Once you placed those feet on the floor there was no hiding.

The world was what it was.

Tom glanced over at his wife before pulling on his jeans and sticking his head through his grey T-shirt from the day before. Imogen’s chest was heaving up and down and he smiled in relief. Then he snuck out the door and tip-toed down the stairs, his footfalls making less sound than a cat on mouse run.

He sat down on the porch in Charles’ old uncomfortable wooden rocking chair. Then he closed his eyes and pondered how many would have made it through the night.

For thousands of years humans had hardly entertained natural enemies. Through brutality and cunningness we had climbed the evolutionary ladder and ascended the summit of the food chain. And for a long time we had only feared that a creation of our own would be our ultimate undoing: An Artificial Super Intelligence, a nuclear winter or a slow suffocation from all the filth we had polluted the planet with over our millennia of reign.

The thought that we would ever encounter an alien species smarter than ourselves was so outrageous that we had even stopped making movies about it.

We had been listening to the sky for too long.

And it had always been silent.

Now we finally understood why.

“Did you see it?” Charles asked.

Tom opened his eyes. He hadn’t heard Charles approaching. He shook his head.

“Would you’ve been tempted?” Charles asked.

Tom bit down on his lower lip as he gently shook his head. Of course he would’ve been tempted, who wouldn’t?

“Never,” he said.

“Did you ever consider the consequences?” Charles asked.

Tom looked at his father in law with sadness in his eyes. “No.”

“And now?” Charles followed up.

Tom let his mind drift away as he stared out at the empty suburban street. He had always considered the possibility that we weren’t alone in the universe. But he had never expected communication or interaction. The vastness of the universe was simply unfathomable, the distances too great to comprehend.

But in a moment of carelessness, Tom had made the entire universe fathomable.

Every distance comprehendible.

It hadn’t been planned. Tom’s company had received an invitation to a physics lecture at Stanford University. Always looking to save a penny Tom’s boss had said the event represented an excellent marketing opportunity. The reality was that competition for talent had gotten so bad that college drop-outs were given sport-star sign on fees and many twenty-something engineers could retire before they hit thirty. Tom posing a few clever questions at the official Q&A could be what helped getting their company name out there among the noise of ruffling check books.

Tom was known to ask the questions no-one else thought of. It was kind of his thing.

So in preparation for the lecture he had read up on string theory and M-theory and all those other theories he’d struggled grasping when completing his Ph D a decade and a half earlier. But being away from academia for so long had done something to Tom’s brain. So when the esteemed theoretical physicist, Nakamoto Akashi, had started scribbling his equations on the blackboard in front of two hundred former and current students, Tom had simply stood up from his seat and raised his hand and said, “Stop.”

The ensuing silence, after almost two hundred heads had turned to face Tom, had been as eerie as if he had just used the N-word.

But Tom hadn’t even taken notice. He had just stood there, eyes fixated at the blackboard. And then he had started making his way down to Akashi and the blackboard.

As Tom was approaching the stage a security guard had started barking orders into his radio. But Akashi’s simple shake of his head had made the security guard stand down.

Tom had walked up to the chalkboard, grabbed the sponge and wiped out almost everything Akashi had jotted down since beginning his lecture. A collective gush had swept through the auditorium.

Akashi had handed Tom a piece of chalk and taken two steps backwards. Later he would claim that he’d recognised a glimmer of enlightenment in Tom’s eyes.

With a trembling hand Tom had proceeded to write a single equation on the chalkboard, before stepping back to join Akashi.

Akashi and Tom had stared at the equation for maybe a minute and a half, and then Akashi had simply turned to face Tom, and started hugging him.

Then the applause had started.

Tom had still been in Akashi’s grip when the tears started flowing. Hearing the audience response he had realised his achievement; that somehow, with a simple equation, he had replaced the relativity theory and quantum mechanics in one single swoop.

A short ten letter equation suddenly described every large and small event occurring in our universe.

And for the first time in history we had a unified theory – the holy grail of science.

It opened up unimaginable opportunities.

The distant stars were suddenly within our grasp.

If Tom’s equation were to be proven correct, there were no limits to how far humans could venture.

He let go of Akashi and turned to face the audience, who were now standing in their seats. Cheering.

Tom smiled.

And then the lights went out.

***

When the lights came back on, they never really went out again.

It only took twelve hours before we received the first message. For decades humans had been listening out for life, combing the night sky for signs we were not alone.

Turned out we were never really alone. Someone had just been waiting for us to make some proper noise.

Turned out we’d also been looking in the wrong places. We’d been searching for planets similar to Earth, as if an advanced civilisation would restrict itself to staying on a rocky planet susceptible to anything from natural disasters to meteor rain. We’d ignored the obvious; once a civilisation conquered space – it would remain in space.

We’d considered the coldness of deep space a restriction for life, when the truth was that any Artificial Life form would love to hang out in a cool place where it could run it’s circuits efficiently.

The message eventually came in the form of an order; we were told to forget what we had learnt in that auditorium and to never start looking for ways to leave Earth.

One could almost argue it was a generous offer. Every time humans had discovered a new world we had taken it over with little regards to its native inhabitants.

Now we were offered to keep our little corner of the universe to ourselves, as long as we stayed put.

If we treated her well, Earth could last us another billion years before our sun finally flamed out. But Earth would be our home, we could never leave her.

Those were the terms offered.

“To a certain degree I understand them,” Tom said. “We’re like the crazy neighbour you don’t want crashing your party.”

“You’re comparing us to North Korea?” Charles asked.

Tom shrugged.

Charles shook his head. “But who are they?”

Tom shrugged again. Nobody knew who they were. The only thing Tom knew was that they, whoever they were, were infinitely more advanced than us. To prove their point they had instructed the important governments of the world to point their telescopes to a specific point at the night sky at very a specific date and time.

And then they had initiated a short countdown. When the clocks reached zero a small light burst was picked up by every hobby cosmologist and government controlled observatory around the world. It didn’t take the geek community long to calculate where the flash had originated. It had come from the outer region of the Milky Way. Based on how slowly the light burst faded the world soon realised it was screwed.

Cosmologist had been registering these blinks randomly scattered across the night sky for decades. Up until then we’d assumed they were large stars going up in flames, so-called supernovas, while occasionally taking entire solar systems down with them. Now we understood they were planned exterminations of unruly civilisations.

Stay on earth and live. Aim for the stars and perish. Those were our only two options.

But that wasn’t enough for our new rulers. To make us obedient they had to squash every dream we would ever consider entertaining, they would have to make us understand we weren’t special.

So they informed us, in very clear words, that there was no God.

No creator.

The light that never went away was a constant reminder of that.

“They are wearing us down,” Tom said. “Humans are explorers by heart. They know it’s not in our nature to stay put on Earth. So they are wearing us down, thinning the herd.”

“So the light is part of their plan?”

Tom shrugged. He didn’t know what the light was for. “That’s my theory. It’s like playing loud music for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.”

Charles nodded. Like most of Earth’s population he hadn’t slept properly since Tom had made his discovery. If you closed your eyes, darkness didn’t arrive as before. It had been replaced by a light at the end of a cavern. Slowly it drew you in.

If you were lucky, it would just tempt you.

But some it gobbled up.

Tom turned and looked at his father in law, “How do you prevent prison riots? You make the prison population manageable.”

Charles nodded. “We’re doing the work for them.”

“They make it appear it’s our choice. Free will, when there’s none.”

“So what do we do?”

Tom shrugged. He had no idea. It was the reason he had quit his job and decided to go on a road trip. To get away from colleagues and government officials breathing down his neck, escape the bubble.

The superior alien race hadn’t acted until Tom had shared his findings with the world. The moment someone had uploaded Tom’s lecture to YouTube the lights had gone out. That meant the aliens probably had no way of monitoring what humans did in the physical world, only what was shared in the digital world. That was an important distinction.

“What would make us change our opinion about North Korea?” Tom asked.

Charles let out a big breath. “A new leader. A new regime.”

“There’s another option,” Tom said.

“What’s that?”

“Intercontinental nuclear weapons. It would level the playing field. Give them a chair at the negotiation table, regardless of how crazy they are.”

“So how do we level the playing field?”

“Not by stop doing science,” Tom said.

“I don’t get it. If they’re so much more advanced than us, then they would’ve been tracking our scientific progress for centuries, maybe even millennia. Why did they only act now? They would have known this moment would come.”

“It wasn’t the equation that spawned their reaction.”

“What was it then?”

“It was what we did afterwards.”

Charles looked at his son in-law. This was new information.

“You know what my employer does,” Tom said.

“They sell ads.”

“We operate a search engine. What’s being searched for is a reflection of our society. And do you know what the most searched sentence in the world was twelve hours after humans finally cracked the code to our universe?”

Charles shook his head.

“How to take the perfect selfie,” Tom said. “I believe that’s the real reason we’re not allowed to leave Earth. We’re not worthy.”

“That’s bullshit. Who are they to make that decision?” Charles barked. “Only God can make that judgement.”

But Tom wasn’t listening. Talking to his father in law he’d just realized something.

“What if we’re wrong?” he asked.

“About what?”

“This light people see every time they close their eyes. How can it be projected into our minds if this alien civilisation is thousands of light years away?”

“You’re the scientist. I thought that equation of yours made all these things possible.”

“Making something possible is not the same as making it probable.

“Meaning?”

“I’m not sure. But something doesn’t add up.”

“Don’t start the conspiracy talk, Tom. I know you feel responsible for what’s happened. But it doesn’t help denying the truth. I watched that galaxy being blown to pieces on the TV. Seven billion other people did as well.”

“What if nothing has been watching us from afar? What if instead, we woke up something here?”

Charles shook his head. “Now you’ve totally lost me.”

“You say my company sells ads. But that’s never been the point. From the very first day we knew what we wanted: the data. Selling ads was just a way to pay for getting the data.”

“Is this supposed to make any sense?”

“The more data we could get our hands on the smarter it became,” Tom said, not listening to his father-in law.

“It?”

“Shit,” Tom said. “I’ve been so blind. It’s been there right in front of me.”

“What has?”

“Bear with me Charles. For now this is just a theory. But what if our technology is broadcasting subconscious messages to us during the day, set to trigger when we fall asleep?”

“You mean people’s phones could tell them to stop breathing?”

“….and walk into traffic. Jump off a cliff. Everything that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks.”

“But why just some people?”

“It could be selective. Based people’s online behavior.”

“That’s insane. You think a computer virus is doing this?”

“No. If I’m right, my equation woke up an AI. Made it sentient.”

“Then you need to shut it down.”

“I’m afraid that train has left the station. If an AI has turned sentient it would be everywhere.”

“So this whole – look up at the sky and watch us blow up a galaxy was just a hoax?”

“I gave it the equation. I gave it the means to calculate something we considered incalculable. It used it to take us for a ride.”

“And now it’s sitting back watching humanity commit collective suicide?”

“I don’t think that’s what’s happening.”

“Then what?”

“It’s a culling exercise. It’s making the hard choices.”

“Hard choice? Killing us.”

“In order to save us.”

“By committing genocide?”

“We cull animal populations all the time. For the greater good. To save the ecosystem.”

“We’re not animals.”

“Aren’t we?”

“Then why stop humans from leaving Earth? Leaving would solve our problems, wouldn’t it? If we could conquer other galaxies then we wouldn’t have a population problem. Our solar system alone could probably harbour trillions of humans.”

“And that’s the thing. It waited twelve long hours before deciding to take action. It must have done the calculations and decided Earth is needed. For some reason it’s too precious to lose.”

Charles looked up at the sky. “So this place is no accident after all. Humans are special.”

“It still doesn’t mean there is a creator, Charles.”

“Is doesn’t mean there’s not.”

“True.”

“So what if you’re right, Tom? I’m not going to stand on the sideline watching good people die. In God’s eyes all humans are created equal.”

“You know that first line: Let there be light,” Tom said.

Charles nodded.

“There’s has to be darkness before light,” Tom said, then he picked up his phone from his pocket and smashed it against the wooden flooring of the porch.