The Satellite

As I opened the door into the cold morning air I listened intently to the reason why my friend had dressed so nicely. When I see one of my peers dressed up I feel like something is going to go very wrong because I'm wearing a pair of unwashed jeans.

Apparently it was career day. A day where booth after booth take resume after resume. "Look fresh, they won't want to hire you if you look normal." I thought to myself.

To my dismay I had to walk past all of that to turn in some pointless homework I just copied onto paper. As I walked by, the sun put its hands over my eyes as if to keep me from seeing anyone who belonged there.

Every booth had the same kind of person sweating and standing behind them. Their ties performing tracheotomies as they stood there taking and giving papers with a toothy grin on their face, each one of them concerned with the simple default pleasures in life: money, children, status. I looked at the cobble stones as I walked to avoid seeing everyone around me succeeding. My brow sweating I finally arrived to the drop box.

I arrived the same time a quiet woman did. I took my time taking my homework out to see what slot she would slide her papers into. Coincidentally she held the very homework for the very class that I had walked across campus for. We left, I behind her, and walked through the career fair like small boats passing and ignoring enormous islands.

What she looked like as she walked through the breezes resembled an object being pushed through empty space, even gravity failed to control her. Her skirt floated around her waist like a halo, each blush of wind slightly lifting each bend and curl, eluding to the subtle curvature in her tanned legs. You could almost see the perpetual growth of her hair as it flew closely behind her face. She turned her head to make sure a bike wasn't about to ruin my moment with her and her hair swam to the front of her face forcing her to flutter her eyes. While time was still stopped she began walking again. Her sandals, the birds, the suited androids; they all remained silent as she moved.

I didn't want to believe that someday, a girl like that was going to be pinned down by a black pencil skirt and the endless ordeal of earning a paycheck. I didn't want to believe that this moment or this woman was going to deteriorate and crumble into a lifeless skeleton someday. I didn't want to believe. I never wanted to believe. This got me thinking about the damned career fair.

I thought "Was I to be doomed like those robots too? Put in a cotton leash and thrown into a work camp? Did everything have to crumble to the ugly, honest, dull core inside?" She veered onto her own path and just like that I was thrown back onto my terrible and real earth, once again searching through that giant box of gray for something bright and colorful.

The Score

"Jim? Jim Smith? Ralph? Ralph....Ralph...Nug-Yen? Beth?" I wanted him to just tell us all that we were going to be O.K.  I wanted to jump out of my cheap plastic seat and punch someone. Just nail them and watch the blood from the rest of my body rush to my fist. I was consumed with anticipation. This score meant the entire world to me in the endless five minutes I was waiting for it. Your entire village has ebola? You just found out your dad is a serial killer? You think you have it tough? You don't have to take this class.

"Daniel?" My ticking foot rested and flew off of my knee as I asked "Bothwell?" He nodded and I made my way toward the paper that was going to either ruin me or make me. Shit he folded it; I thought to myself. When someone folds you a piece of paper with an important grade on it, it usually means that important grade is a piece of shit. Pieces of shit are bad, I didn't want a piece of shit. I felt doomed.

I uncurled the paper and looked at the score. Fifty...fifty points out of a god awful one hundred. I turned and asked him what the mean was. Had I beaten the rest? Fifty one, a god awful fifty one. I was ecstatic. I felt like I had just survived one of Jigsaw's contraptions in those Saw movies. I was so glad I had cut my leg off in time for me to be saved. I was so glad that I had ripped that key out of that woman's living stomach before the timer went off. I was so glad I was walking out of that empty warehouse breathing. I might have been bloody and fucked up, but at least I wasn't one of those poor bastards laying in a pool of blood on the floor inside.

I felt like I was floating to my car. The mountains, the women, the sky; they all seemed to be saying "Climb me! Fuck me! Fly through me!" Who knew that mediocrity could feel so damn good. I had survived, and we forget that that means something. Today I was valiant, and maybe I will be in future days too, but I cant promise anything. So I come home and treat myself, for who knows what tomorrow will bring.

The Plane Crash

I can't be late today. Something horrible and important is happening in lecture today and it's essential that I stay to endure this horrible and important thing. Today is the day I get to spill my beans onto a sheet filled with unanswered questions to suggest to the people above me that they should reconsider denouncing me as someone that can contribute to society.

I walk in and the lecture hall is littered with people shuffling their papers like ants eating a strawberry ten times their size: frantic from realizing how large the strawberry actually is up close. They still have a few minutes to squeeze in as many bites as they can before it's taken away for their examination. The professor walks in and I can see everyone surrendering to him with their eyes. "Hello passengers, this is your pilot speaking, I'm sorry to have to inform you of this, but the plane is plummeting into the ocean and there is nothing I can do about it."

The professor's servants pass out the papers with looks of ease on their face. I always find myself so envious of their stressless position in this merciless knowledge chamber. There is a surge of shuffling and the test has begun. You can almost here the pencils dancing just above the paper as their wielders fearfully realize how much of the strawberry was left uneaten. There is more shuffling as the room searches for some light in the dark, unknown abyss that is the exam. The interior's of the students are beginning to crumble. Watching my peers take their tests around me is like watching kamikaze jets make their final plunge for the sake of their grades. Do everything you can. Write whatever you can think of.

"Pencils down" the professor says, as if to imply that that entire test was just a simulation. A simulation we didn't know we were partaking in. We all look up from the wreckage to see if the people we boarded the plane with are still alive. Oh yes there is the fat man with the hawaiian shirt, and the woman who complained about the food. They are all here.

The heat from the blazing fire of anxiety departs with my face. It's all out of our hands now. The plane has crashed and I'm not allowed to go back so might as well help this flaming debris off this poor man's leg. We all knew we couldn't go back in time, and we relish all the comfort that that offers. We turn our tests into the nonchalant servants and exit the simulation to go about our regular business with one less dilemma haranguing our minds. Until the next trip of course.