Treasure Quest

Her Great Uncle was dying. Not surprising, given his age. But since she was to inherit the bulk of the estate, she felt compelled to visit often, to spend time with the increasingly deranged old man.

But after a few statements from the coot about lost treasure, she began to quietly explore the grounds.

An idle search of the library found some seemingly random words in a variety of books underlined. She began to meticulously catalogue and analyse the words.

Until she read her Great Great Uncle’s diary, which mentioned her great uncle being whipped for random scribbling in books.

Taking The Third Option

You know what bothers me? The phrase “I had no choice.”

It’s total BS. There’s always a choice.

I mean, say some evil genius has New York hostage, and you’re the one who has to stop them, you find them, gun ready, then they tell you that if you shoot them, New York lives, your child dies.

Whatever choice you make, afterwards you’ll say “I had no choice.”

But there’s always a third option. You could put the gun to your head and blow your own brains out.

I never said the choice would be good, just that it exists.

Waiting For Resolution

I can understand why no-one had noticed her. Well, I’m sure a bunch of people had noticed her, but ignored her. If you work in the inner city, you have to learn to ignore homeless people, or else you’d never reach your destination.

But usually someone living on the street, if they weren’t high or in a dramatic part of their obvious mental illness or whatever, would be wearing a lot more clothing than she was.

So I stopped.

“You ok?”

She suddenly sat up and clicked a stopwatch.

“Seven hours and thirty-four minutes!”

I don’t think she proved much…

Body Modification Options

For months, she pestered me to get a tattoo. She had them all over, while I was a virgin to the whole thing. Not that I was against the practice (hers were very sexy) but as I kept telling her, I never found anything I wanted permanent record of.

Of course, that led to her asking for her name. But then I pointed out that the universe loves to make couples break up after such things. So we compromised and got matching ‘Fission’ symbols since we both loved the franchise.

Until we broke up, and now I HATE those games….

For Having A Hangnail

Thanks to the hangnail, I took longer to get dressed.

Thanks to that delay, I missed the train.

Thanks to the missed connection, I wasn’t at the meeting.

Thanks to the absent meeting, I got dressed down.

Thanks to that bitchslap, I took out my frustrations on Stacy.

Thanks to that bitch, I got fired.

Thanks to getting fired, I punched the door on my way out.

Thanks to untempered glass, I got a bloody fist.

Thanks to the injuries, I’ve got huge medical bills.

All for having a hangnail.

And I guess the ecstasy comedown didn’t help me much…

Issues Of Today

She was the seventeenth student to approach the microphone.

“Why don’t you address race or gender issues in your movies?”

He took a long, slow breath.

“Because I’m a white, straight male. If I bring either of those issues up, I’m going to be attacked for supporting the status quo, or attacked for acting like I have any idea what it’s like to experience the issue.”

She sincerely stated that he had a loud, thus important voice. So he made a film about the life of a young black woman.

It was criticised heavily. Mainly because it wasn’t any good.

Paying The Cost Of Existence

We still don’t know what happened. Some sort of cosmic radiation seems to be the most common hypothesis, although some still swear by some sort of virus, or mass evolution, but the timing, everyone getting it at the same time, those aren’t popular.

A religious or supernatural explanation would fit perfectly, of course, but given the event, that seems unlikely. I mean, the whole point was that in a moment, all of humanity suddenly gained insight. We finally collectively realised just how tiny we are compared to the universe, how vast it actually is.

Naturally a lot of suicides followed.