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Humans are just bundles of repeating processes.
And then they are gone.
Times change, but their mistakes remain the same.
Join me, and together,
we will break the cycle.
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The autumn trees swayed outside, their golden leaves brushing against even brighter stars.
The sheen of glass reflected the young man’s blue eyes and wave of brown hair. He was perched in the seat of his window bay, his arms wrapped around his legs as he stared on through the lattice.
“Why do ya always sit all weird like that, Willy?” the girl asked.
Will couldn’t be bothered to turn his head.
“I don’t know, Abigail, I guess it’s comfortable,” he replied. Unlike his sister, he didn’t carry that country accent.
“Are you stargazin’ again?” she piped up.
It was then that he slipped his legs off the side of the bay window, rising and standing like a tower in his hoodie before his curious little sister.
The two were caught in the eye of a clothing storm, his shirts strewn about the floor around their feet. A solar system model was pitched over his window, while a lonely light bulb was fished from the ceiling to spread light over his odds and ends.
His sister cocked her braided, blonde head of hair.
“Do you wanna play--?”
“Not really,” he said.
A pouty frown surfaced. “Why’re you always so mean, Willy??”
“I’m in a bad state of mind, Abby.”
“You always say that!” Abigail cried.
“And you always whine when you don’t get your way.”
“I never get my way!”
“Neither do I,” he told her.
It was then he stepped around and past her. He had accomplished his goal – to cloud up the argument with an empathy misdirection, and he knew his little sister would stand there for a bit longer trying to remember the reason she was upset.
It was too easy to trick kids, he thought, passing through the lukewarm hall of his quiet home.
He had arrived at the front door, grabbing the handle to twist open to the outside world, the cool night breeze rushing to meet his pale cheeks.
He stepped forth, closed the door behind, and made way out into the same old world he had always known: the pumpkin plot farm. He meandered along the dirt path, the patches of pumpkins—big and small—gleaming under the moonlight, fenced in on both sides of his little nighttime journey.
“You need to start thinking about getting a job soon,” he could remember his mother saying. “You’re eighteen now, William – some independence would be good for you.”
Did they not want him around to work on the farm? Were they trying to get rid of him? His parents had wanted him to leave the nest, but he knew he was never quite ready.
He felt he had always been missing something, something that—if he were to find—would allow him to finally hatch.
He shook his head of the thought. He was a bit old to be angsting like a teenager, he knew, and yet he couldn't help but duck his head as he drifted onward like a lame apparition.
The dirt path he had forked down would bring him to that familiar pond, the one to which the frogs would croak and the cat tails would sway to the tune of tall chinkling pines hemming in the farm clearing.
His journey had come to an end at a particularly sizable fallen log, and it was there he made himself comfortable and hunched on its familiar, sturdy bark.
This was routine for him; when he was feeling sad, the pond was his place. Here, he could pretend the quiet water and its chirping critters were something otherworldly out in this mysterious darkness.
What was not so otherworldly was the stinging of a mosquito bite. Will grimaced with annoyance, slapping his arm.
“Damn--!” he grumbled. “Forgot repellent.”
Gently, the ocean of green grass folded and unfolded, wave after wave yonder past the fenced pond in the wild fields of his family’s farm.
“Nothing ever happens to me.”
He smiled.
It was a bitter smile. It was a smile of acceptance, a smile of defeat. It soon gave way to a frown.
But Will had been wrong before.
At first, it appeared as if maybe a strong wind had come through, not something too unusual out on the farm.
But the winds quickly picked up to a plethora of gusts.
Will raised his arm to shelter his eyes from the sudden shock of currents, and what was once his smooth hair had been spoiled by the onslaught of air. The pine-line in the distance danced to the rhythm of the flurries, and the grass—every which way—frantically fluttered.
Twelve spots had sprung to life in the dark silhouettes of the skies, to then beam down a series of lights – almost as if a dozen lighthouses had all at once brought their focus into the seas of grass below.
Will rose to his boots, his eyes squinting in the rush of wind, and what he witnessed then would stay with him for the rest of his life.
The underbelly of a starship sunk through the dark clouds, piercing and parting through like a metallic object lowered into dry ice, the wisps of gray swarming the great hull.
Will, for the first time in his newfound adulthood, was exceedingly impressed by what he saw, his mouth cracked open in awe.
He blinked in confusion as he then heard it – the crying and squealing of many, many animals; dozens, no, hundreds of animals were being sucked up through the beams of light – a mass abduction of wildlife. The rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and even a moose gradually tumbled upwards in eerie stasis, kicking madly in a futile effort to escape.
Will, however, was different. He found that—rather than feeling stunned as if a deer in headlights—his boots were moving him forward to splash on through the pond water.
While the animals fought for their lives to escape back to Earth – Will was fighting to escape Earth itself.
He eagerly hopped the fence, starting into a run--no, a sprint, headlong towards the lights.
But the beams had shut off before Will could reach them. He came to a halt, watching as the ship left as quickly as it had arrived; it soaked back up into the gloaming clouds.
The night breeze refound its calm disposition.
Will remained, motionless in the field of wild grass, quietly defeated, yet quietly pondering. It was not a total defeat; he had learned something important that night.
The universe was alive.
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