A Remarkable Blip

Dwayne Gravy was laying in his hammock. It was one of those camping hammocks made out of the same material as a tent. Dwayne’s salt and pepper sweatpants were visible through three tiny holes, perfect circles melted away by pesky embers from a burning flower that, when inhaled, finds itself met with open arms by receptors inherent to the human brain. The two ends of the hammock were tied to iron rods. One of the rods supported the stairs leading to a second floor apartment while the other made up the corner post of a short fence encircling the little rectangular hole that provides sunlight to basements.

Dwayne was listening to a playlist of music he once burned onto a CD. The tracklist consisted mostly of vaguely romantic songs covered by ska bands, a valentine’s day mixtape for a girl he dated in high school who broke up with him a couple days later on live television during a field trip to a taping of MuchOnDemand. Dwayne was getting over a more recent break up and found comfort in the warm nostalgic buzz that blanketed the noxious vibes once associated with these songs.

Dwayne was halfway through Goldfinger’s rendition of “Just Like Heaven” when he began to hear a whistling coming from way up in the sky. He squeezed the stem of his earbuds which instantly dissolved any background noise. The perfect clarity of sound only lasted for several more seconds as the whistling gave way to a persistent screeching howl, drowning out the first few wah-wahs of a shredding guitar solo.

Something whizzed by Dwayne’s head. Whatever it was, it landed upright with a quiet thud, easily piercing through the astroturf rug below.

Dwayne carefully examined the object from the safety of his hammock. The sunlight reflected off its shiny surface revealing an intricate pattern of intersecting lines, perhaps the playful mixing of metals from the inner core of a baby planet lost in space. Dwayne shifted his upper body over the side of the hammock. The iron rods creaked as he walked hand over hand, slowly swinging himself closer to what he assumed was the meteorite that almost ended his life.

Dwayne reached out to gauge the object’s temperature, nearly tipping over as he stretched out his arm. In an instant, a purplish green spark arced from the top of the metal slab to the palm of Dwayne’s right hand. His eyeballs immediately rolled back into his head as if they wanted to get a better look at what was about to go down.

It was at this moment that a helicopter approached Dwayne’s apartment. Aboard the private chopper were Todd and Terry Jr, co-CEOs of FOMOnet and the adult sons of Albertan oil baron Terry Dean. Todd and Terry Jr used some of the money their daddy made from mining petroleum-soaked sands to start a multinational technology conglomerate that mined information from dopamine-soaked brains. Terry Dean had recently become wrapped up in a conspiracy theory that began circling on FOMOnet. It was because of this conspiracy that Todd and Terry Jr were narrowing in on Dwayne and his hammock.

Terry Dean adamantly believed that Heinrich Himmler and a small group of colonizers fled to the dark side of the moon in late April of 1945 in search of the Holy Grail. According to believers, any object that falls from space has a nonzero chance of containing miraculous healing powers. As Terry’s teeny weenie no longer hardened like it used to, his search for eternal youth was becoming increasingly desperate.

Because Todd and Terry Jr felt somewhat responsible for their father’s quick decline into madness, they agreed to track and collect as much space junk as they could manage. On this particular trip, the brothers were forced to quickly leave their vacation mansion on the island of St. Vincent in order to arrive at the landing site (Dwayne’s backyard) soon after impact.

At this point, Dwayne was limply hanging off the side of his hammock. Contained within the purplish green spark was a transfer of subatomic particles, a stream of axions whose intrinsic characteristics carried information with such elegant complexity it would make a quantum computer blush. The particles pulsed throughout Dwayne’s entire body until they reached his head, permanently rewiring the neurons in his brain.

The object did not provide immortality nor was it the product of space Nazis. In actuality the hunk of metal was an ancient artifact developed by intelligent life that existed 9 quadrillion kilometers from Dwayne’s face, give or take a few inches.

The inventors of the artifact were residents of a dying planet they called Cephiroth. Cephiroth was running its natural course, slowly being swallowed up by its own dying sun. The Cephirothlings managed to live peacefully on this planet for 5 billion years without bringing upon mass destruction to themselves or their surroundings. At the core of accomplishing this remarkable feat was a philosophy which all Cephirothlings subscribed to.

It is not uncommon for intelligent life to send something into space that is representative of their planet as a whole. Earth chose to launch the Voyager Golden Record pressed with the songs of humpback whales and Chuck Berry. Cephiroth chose to launch the Kether-10, a seemingly simple slab of metal encoded with the essence of their treasured philosophy. It was through the propagation of this way of knowing that the Cephirothlings decided to keep a piece of their species alive.

By design, Dwayne fully embodied the Kether-10 upon contact, instantaneously experiencing its entire 4.2 billion year journey across the cosmos.

Dwayne Gravy was no longer the same Dwayne Gravy.
He was now 4.2 billion and 23 years old.

While embodying the Kether-10, Dwayne learned to maintain an undirected state of mind for thousands of years at a time, something he was incapable of doing for just a couple of minutes only moments before. He was able to focus his attention on nothingness: nonthoughts void of all perception including the blackness of empty space.

Over hundreds of millennia, Dwayne came to recognize himself as one with the universe. A sentient piece of the cosmos made up of the same little specks of energy that lack inherent significance or purpose. He acquired a profound appreciation for existence. For volition. For the randomness that brought him both. An indefinite series of interconnected experiences.
A remarkable blip in time and space.

Dwayne was awash in existential enlightenment and a dash of ambiguous grief. The breakups and hang-ups that he held onto so tightly simply melted away.

Dwayne’s eyes were just beginning to roll back into place when the sound of air being periodically sliced to bits forced its way into his ear canals. The helicopter belonging to Todd and Terry Jr had landed in the bike lane of the street in front of Dwayne’s apartment. Within seconds the two men burst through the wooden gate that led into the small urban backyard.

As Dwayne’s eyes came into focus, he recognized Terry Jr in his signature pastel khaki shorts and slicked back greasy black hair. Todd and Terry Jr scanned the backyard upon entering, quickly clocking the shiny object wedged into the ground. Dwayne pushed off one of the iron rods that made up the little fence, managing to swing his body close enough to grab Terry Jr’s shoulder with his left hand. Before Terry Jr had a chance to reach for the artifact, his own left hand was smacked away by Dwayne’s right. Microseconds before the hands came into contact with one another, a purplish green spark connected the gap between their bodies.

Terry Jr dropped to his knees. All the muscles in his body loosened as his eyes naturally rolled upwards and out of sight.

Terry Jr momentarily became the Kether-10.
He housed its soul.

When floating through space for 4.2 billion years, the line between basking in the vastness of the universe and suffocating in solitary confinement is primarily dependent on one’s state of mind. It took Terry Jr thousands of tortuous years before he began to understand the nature of his consciousness. The cloud of ego that fogged up his sense of self-understanding was lifted and, for the first time in his life, he gazed inwards with a heightened sense of objectivity.

Over hundreds of millennia, Terry Jr came to understand his reality as a product of the stories he believed. He acknowledged laws as the stories humans tell themselves to govern themselves. He recognized principles as the stories humans accept in order to coexist. The universe does not inherently subscribe to fundamental truths; fundamental truths are ascribed by humans.

Terry Jr saw his own identity as the story he told himself about himself. He was the byproduct of a pattern intrinsic to both the physical and invisible components of reality: the vibrations of atoms, the orbits of celestial bodies, the periodic motion that drives human behavior. Terry Jr was merely a pawn in his father’s selfish pursuits, an intergenerational consequence of paternal neglect and maternal regret.

Terry Jr unintentionally projected his traumatic loneliness onto the world, creating a means to phase out human connection from the human experience. Much like his father, he treated the planet that admirably sustained his life as an obstacle to personal gain. With the embodied foresight of 4.2 billion years, Terry Jr was profoundly aware of how humans had lost their way and how he played a critical role in keeping them from finding it.

Terry Jr awoke to Todd standing over him with his eyes wide and his jaw slacked. He quickly stood up, revealing the artificial grass imprinted on his supple knees. He demanded Todd to hold out one of his hands, palm facing up.

Terry Jr hovered his right hand above Todd’s.
Nothing happened.

He then hovered his left hand above Todd’s.
For a third time, the purplish green spark made an appearance.
The axions flowed into the blond brother’s body, sending his piercing blue eyes to the back of his head.

It took Terry Jr a fraction of a second to recognize the potency of the alien artifact. The effects of the Kether-10 would travel around the world faster than a virus (ideas that provide insights into the nature of reality tend to be especially contagious, even without the aid of an axionic spark).

Terry Jr dug deep into his mind to override the 4.2 billion year awakening, something which the Cephirothlings did not perceive as a possibility. His generational wealth was in jeopardy. His freedom to choose which laws and principles to adhere to was at risk. He convinced himself that humanity was endangered.

Against his better judgment, which was now at the will of a newly rewired consciousness, Terry Jr pulled out what appeared to be the handle of a girthy switchblade. With the flick of his wrist, a single-edged sword with the lengthy curve of a katana instantly materialized.

In one fell swoop Terry Jr cleanly cut off Dwayne’s right hand.

Dwayne’s own screeching howl beautifully accompanied The Makeshift Heroes cover of “Mad World” playing in his ears. Dwayne pulled his handless arm back, holding the stump of his wrist tightly against his chest. Blood began to slowly pool at the bottom of his hammock, spilling onto the astroturf rug three drops at a time.

Before Todd had the opportunity to return from his own personal journey across space and time, Terry Jr swiftly cut off his brother’s hand. A gold Rolex slid off Todd’s stubby wrist and landed softly on the fake lawn. Terry Jr used his left hand to pull the Kether-10 from the ground, storing the artifact between the two severed hands.

Todd momentarily regained consciousness, immediately collapsing again at the sight of his dismembered hand. Terry Jr managed to catch Todd by his armpits during his descent, dragging him backwards through the wooden gate and into the chopper.

Upon the brothers’ return to St. Vincent, Terry Jr ordered the pilot to fly over La Soufrière, the island’s resident active volcano. Once hovering over the lava dome, Terry Jr shoved his right arm out the helicopter window. The alien artifact sat on his palm, still sandwiched between the two severed hands. Purplish green sparks crackled with a mad intensity. Terry Jr carefully pulled out his sword and slashed off his own hand.