A Question

If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

It's an old question, designed to open your mind to questioning the nature of reality,  what is sound, is it in the eye, or rather ear, of the beholder, or is it the thing making the waves of energy that are converted into sound the thing that makes noise and thus doesn't require an audience? What is sound?

But to be honest, the question is fatally flawed.

There's always someone to hear it.

Or something at least.

Just out of reach...

Lowest Point

I never found out what it was called, but this cheesy made-for-TV movie I saw while i was home sick from school really stuck with me. The lead actress, at the end as she was in the arms of her true love, said that sometimes you have to get to your lowest point before you find the person who'll raise you up.

So the night I was dumped, broke, and sitting dejected in the gutter, and I met him, I thought it was fate.

And it was, in a way, as a few years later I met his divorce lawyer.

Important Souls

The universe actively doesn't care about you.

And that's not because it lacks the ability to care, it cares deeply about many things, all of them revolving around its life cycle. The specifics of the laws of physics and gravity and such inside it are important and monitored.

But life, people? There are only three souls that matter to the universe.

The leftover soul that was the sole survivor of the last universe.
The soul that is destined to survive into the next universe.
And Driox Eutob, of Anzurt 6, the greatest soul singer ever.

It can have musical tastes!

Lock And Loaded

I wasn't trying to develop time travel technology, at least not the 88 miles per hour in a flashy car type that most people know of. I was trying to work out how to temporal lock things, mainly food and drugs. Removing the need for conventional refrigeration would save so much energy and help so many people.

But I accidently inverted the semi-tachyon flow and I locked myself for about fifty years.

Now, on one hand, with some refinement, this is an amazing achievement in human history.

But more importantly humanity pretty much is history now, so overall not good.

Balance In All Things

I stepped out into my yard to get a Elfmelon off my vine for breakfast and almost tripped over him. He looked like he must have been a hundred cycles old, but when I coughed he sprung to his feet like an acrobat.

"Forgive, no coin for bed. Balance in life."

He bowed to me, and went to leave. I called out to him, I was raised right, so I offered him some Elfmelons and coins.

In tears, he took them, then picked up a stone and attacked me.

I heard something about deeds and balance before I blacked out.

Handheld

We held hands before we met, the tour guide instructing us to walk in pairs across the bridge. We laughed it off.

The next time we held hands was on our first actual date, after weeks of chatting online post-tour, a virtual date over shared Netflix watching, and a slightly too large Italian meal. We touched hands and then burped together loudly.

We must have held hands a million times after that, from the wedding aisle to just helping her up.

And now I'm holding it for the last time.

I wish we could cross this bridge as a pair.

Looped

So I've been stuck in this 15.4 minute period for probably ten years. Long enough to have counted the seconds between flashes.

In that time, I've tried everything I could think of to break the cycle. I've done my best to murder all the enemy combatants in the other trench, I've done my best to save everyone in my trench. I've swapped those goals too. I've done nothing, I've done everything, I've died every way I know how.

Nothing has worked.

So, all I've got left is to get someone else looping too.

I've guessed telling you may do it.