Tag: good read

The Variables Part 1

Prologue

When I died I was assigned to the soul production plant. There are 20 soul stampers in the plant along with thousands of other expired souls, each with a different function. There are two soul makers, soul packagers and soul movers, order fillers and inspectors; and there are overseers who report to dE. We accept our functions without any desire for another because there is no such thing as desire here.

Souls are generated on the second floor in a glass room that can be seen from everywhere in the plant. From the first floor, I had could see two soul makers as they monitored the large machine in front of them. Imagine a giant computer processor with two spouts jutting out from the rear of the machine. The spouts dump out newly generated souls onto two conveyor belts that split into ten sections each. Souls travel on the 20 sections dumping into shoots sending them down to the first floor, where my station and 19 others are located. My station was labeled 1A, the one next to me was 1B, and the rest of the sequence was as follows: 1C, 1D, 1E, 1F, 1G, 1H, 1I, 1J, 2A, 2B, etc. Twenty of us watched the souls as they traveled across the conveyors. My function as a soul stamper was to imprint the start date and the expiration date on souls. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t have any control over the dates I stamped. I could see the dates as I stamped them but I had no power to change them. When I first started, I imagined what the humans who got my stamped souls would look like, would they be male or female, have blond hair or black skin. Later I tried to discover a pattern in the dates. I counted how many would come into existence on the same day and expire on the same day. I noticed the souls that survived only three days and those that lasted 100 years. Imagination does exist here, but there is no attachment to any particular outcome of imagination.

As a soul reached the end of the conveyor, a soul packager removed each stamped soul from the belt and placed it on another conveyor, leading it through the packaging process. Each stamped soul travels through a machine resembling an x-ray machine at an airport and exits coated with a clear shrink-wrap. At the end of that conveyor a large bin with wheels collected the souls as they dropped, one stacking perfectly onto the next. Then, soul movers wheeled the full carts into the storage room located on the first floor, at the far end of the long factory.

Soul movers guided the wheeled containers full of stamped and packaged souls to large high shelves and loaded them onto the shelves one at a time. At that point the dates could be seen through the packaging. In fact, that is all one could see in the package since the souls themselves have no visible substance. The souls were not stacked according to a start date or an expiration date. It would appear totally random to the casual observer. You might think all starting dates would go on the same shelf. Instead, they were stored on the shelves exactly as they were received. Thus, all of the souls from my conveyor would be found in aisle 1A.

The next step was soul delivery. The order fillers entered the storage facility with a list of aisle and shelf locations. They pulled specified souls and loaded them into bins similar to the other wheeled containers. Next, they guided the bins out to a loading dock. Slowly, souls drifted out of the bins and disappeared, entering unborn humans on earth.

I functioned as a soul stamper for some segment of my non-earthly existence; then I moved on to other functions both in the soul plant and elsewhere. Currently, I perform the task of gravity maintenance. I suppose this would sound like a rather prestigious job on earth, but here, it‘s simply another function. I haven’t “moved up” in this world. What do I do as a gravity maintainer? To look at me, you’d think nothing at all. When I was a soul stamper, I wasn’t actually holding a stamp and physically stamping each soul. I’m merely using the metaphor to help you get a mental picture. It was my presence, my mind if you will, actually doing all of the work. The same is true in my current job. My very existence functions to maintain gravity, at least as long as that is my assignment.

Your mind is racing with so many questions. Let’s slow things down and sort out your questions. I’ll answer a few of them before I continue with my message; otherwise you won’t be able to concentrate. First, I’ll answer your question concerning my communication method.

Right now, you are in an altered state of consciousness, commonly called a coma. I know you are surprised by this news. Your mind is completely capable of functioning. When your soul does expire, I will be your mentor. This is why I am talking to you now. My mind is communicating with your mind through energy exchange. Although all souls are connected energy, you and I share a common pathway. Your thoughts travel to me so I can “read your mind” and my thoughts, the ones I’m permitted to share with you, travel to you. You can read some of my mind.

You want to know whether you are about to expire. The answer is, no.

As l said, when I was a soul stamper, I could see the dates on each soul as I stamped them. Suddenly I started stamping souls with beginning dates only. No expiration dates. This phenomenon was a curiosity. The answer became a part of my knowledge when it became a part of my function to know.

I hear you. You’re wondering how you ended up in a coma. It was a car accident. You were driving, talking on Bluetooth and someone was passing you while texting at the same time.

I can see you are starting to recall. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. Your daughter’s life is not within my knowledge.

Yes, yes, that is your husband’s voice you hear, but you will not be able to understand it. You cannot have two conversations at one time, one with me and one with him. When your consciousness changes you will be able to understand him. But for the moment, you must listen to what I am saying.

Try to remain calm. The monitors attached to you are showing a spike in your heart rate, indicating distress. You don’t want to give anyone cause for alarm.

I see you are searching to recall exactly what happened during the accident. You desperately want to know if your daughter is alive. You think you couldn’t bare it if she has expired. You will not get your answers in your current state. You will have to reenter earthly consciousness with all of its joys and sorrows to find your answer. You see when your soul expires, you will experience nothing like joy or sorrow. There are no emotions, no desires in this existence.

I must continue with my soul stamping function to help you understand why I’m here now. As I said, when I was stamping souls coming from shoot 1A they had no expiration date. The soul stamper responsible for 1B experienced the same phenomenon. We looked at each other startled and curious. Chatter began throughout the plant. All of the souls passing by all of the soul stampers were imprinted with beginning dates only. This was clearly a new phase of the experiment. But that was not the only change we witnessed. In addition to the missing expiration dates, on a rare occasion, a soul passed by with an additional imprint – a capital V.

I now understand and am here to tell you what it all means. Susan, you have a soul imprinted with a V. This means you are a Variable. You are one of a small percentage of souls currently on earth whose status as a Variable puts you in a position to change the outcome of human existence in the current universe –

Calm down Susan, otherwise, I can’t finish giving you my message –

Susan, please, calm down!

Susan wait -!

Susan, it’s too late, you are returning to your earthly consciousness!

Susan remember, you are a Variable, find the others.

They’ll explain it all to you.

You are a Variable Susan.

A Variable…

Chapter 1

Adam stood staring out the 4th floor window toward the three-story concrete parking garage in front of the hospital. The light behind him created a faint reflection, a ghostly version of himself. His blond hair appeared a light shade of grey and he couldn’t distinguish between brown irises and black pupils. His faded blue T-shirt covering broad muscular shoulders appeared almost white. Leaning in closer he scrutinized the three-day growth on his chin. At that moment he felt the vibration of his silenced cell phone against his upper thigh. Pulling it from his pocket, he read the caller identification: Home.

“Hello.” He answered unsure whether it was his daughter Hannah or his sister Marty calling.

“Hi Daddy. Aunt Marty said I could call and check on Mommy. Is she still sleeping?” The child’s tiny, concerned voice crackled through the phone. The connection wasn’t very good in the intensive care unit.

“Yes honey.” Adam whispered, although there was little chance of waking his comatose wife. “Mommy is still sleeping. Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll wake up soon.” Sleeping had been the easiest way to describe his wife’s condition to their five-year old daughter.

“I’ll be home in about an hour. Tell Aunt Marty there is a casserole in the refrigerator for dinner tonight. I love you Hannah. See you in just a bit.”

As Adam finished the conversation with his daughter, the door opened and a short, chubby nurse entered the room. “Good evening Mr. Cook, I’m Linda. I’ll be taking care of Susan this evening. Would you like to help me shift her around?” The grey haired woman walked over to the white board hanging from the wall and erased the day nurse’s name, replacing it with her own.

As the two rearranged the pillows to support his wife’s limp body, Adam already felt like a pro. He’d helped with this same routine several times over the past three days.

“A few minutes ago, I thought something was going wrong.” He explained to nurse Linda. “I was sitting here and all of the sudden, Susan’s heart rate sped up pretty significantly.” He paused as they lifted Susan, rolling her onto her right side. “Just as I was thinking I should call for help, it settled back to a normal rate.” He looked to the nurse for an explanation.

“That happens sometimes. We don’t really know why, perhaps she was dreaming. As long as it returns to normal within a reasonable timeframe we don’t attempt to explain it and we don’t worry about it.”

As Adam tucked Susan’s shoulder length light brown hair behind her ear to keep it from falling in her face, he noticed a change in her expression. She appeared to be wincing. “Did you see that?” He asked looking toward the nurse for concurrence.

“It’s probably just a reaction to us disturbing her.” She replied not wanting to get Adam’s hopes up.

Within seconds, however, Susan moaned and slowly opened her eyes.

The highly trained nurse didn’t betray her own excitement. Instead, she said calmly, “I’ll page Dr. Daniels.”

While the nurse entered Dr. Daniels’ call code into the hospital intercom system, Adam hunched over his wife placing his face just inches away from hers.

“Susan, baby, Susan can you hear me?” He pleaded.

Susan tried to speak, but her mouth didn’t cooperate. Licking her dry lips, she attempted to communicate a second time, but no words came out.

“Ok Suz, ok honey, don’t try too hard just yet, it’s ok. You’re going to be ok.” Adam said while quickly using the backs of his hands to brush tears away from his moist cheeks.

Susan, desperate to confirm what she thought she heard a few minutes earlier, struggled to regain consciousness. Was Adam talking to their daughter on the phone? Is Hannah alive and unharmed by the accident? The monitors displaying her heart rate once again indicated a spike. Adam, not understanding the cause of her alarm, continued to reassure her she would be ok. Finally, Susan shook her head and managed to utter, “Hannah?”

“Oh yes, yes Hannah is fine.” Adam replied, realizing the source of his wife’s distress. “She’s perfectly fine. The car seat protected her completely. She didn’t have a scratch on her.” He smoothed Susan’s hair away from her face. “She’s just worried about you. I’ll have Marty bring her in as soon as the doctor says it’s ok.”

Susan’s heart rate slowed and she closed her eyes. Just then Dr. Daniels entered the room. Adam anxiously summarized the details of the previous minutes of Susan’s consciousness. “Oh God, she’s not unconscious again is she?” He asked fretfully.

Dr. Daniels leaned over Susan’s bed preparing to examine her pupils when Susan opened her eyes again. “It appears Susan is conscious, but probably extremely tired and sore.” He reassured Adam.

“Hello Susan, I’m Dr. Daniels. You don’t have to talk just yet.” He said as he reached down to grasp her hand, he said, “How about a little hand squeeze to let us all know you are with us.”

Susan responded weakly, “I’m here.”

Dr. Daniels nodded reassuringly at Adam. Then returned his attention to Susan. “I’m pleased to meet you Susan. We’ll take our time getting to know each other. For now, just try to relax. I’m sure you’re not feeling too hot. You’ve got quite a few bumps and bruises and a broken collarbone.”

 

Student Paper- All Things Determined

I’ve been too busy to write. Ugh. Now I hope to get back to it.  This entry was written by my student who wishes to be known only as Will.  With his permission, I’m posting the story because I’m most proud of his writing for this assignment.  The specifics of the assignment really don’t matter.  Just read and enjoy.

All Things Determined

In this paper, I will tell a scattered story. It is the story of a boy and a girl, the boy’s heritage, upbringing, trials and tribulations, and ultimately, his redemption. The story will demonstrate the philosophical theory of hard determinism and how it wholly directs every outcome in human life- be it good or bad. The idea of one having free will is entrenched, enticing, but illusory. It is incompatible with what I’ve found to be the true nature of existence- that our actions and inactions are bound by a ceaseless spiral of causes, and that we are hostages to forces that aren’t always evident.

In the beginning, there was a couple. A man and a woman, both plagued and gifted by various effects stemming from innumerable causes stretching back generation to generation into the ether, are compelled to get married. The husband’s genetic baggage was depression and alcoholism, and to an extent, the wife’s was comparable. However, the magnitude of these blights wouldn’t fully be known to either party until further down the road of life. So, with youthful zeal and newlywed gusto, they birth a daughter. Four years pass, and a son is born- the boy of the story. To all, life seemed good until suddenly it wasn’t. Even at a young age, the boy notices that a kind of unease makes itself known- his father and mother tend to talk very loudly to each other. Mom smokes a lot, and dad sleeps a lot. Over time, the unease meanders into tension, then controlled chaos. Time out. A piercing whistle is blown- divorce.

Now there are two houses, two states of mind, and two newly separated parents for the two children to contend with. It was the typical child-of-divorce story from there on out, only with a not-as-typical tragic twist soon to follow- death. It was during a perfectly bizarre occasion, Christmas morning, that the mother chose to break the news to her two young babes. Sitting amongst the shredded mounds of wrapping paper, and now, childhood, the son and daughter learned of their father’s demise. The daughter cried, but the boy was numb- somehow, he had figured this to be an inevitability and only now realized it. The cause? ‘Drinking too much’ was declared by the mother. Many years would pass until the boy would come to learn that this was the highly-abridged, most child-friendly explanation that his mother could honestly confess that day.

Alright, now here’s the problem with compatibility. Compatibility, or soft determinism, is the idea that free will can co-exist with the binding, purely material, strictly causal concept of hard determinism. Individuals are surely predisposed to certain conditions that are out of their control, it is argued, but with that comes the ability to choose- to act or not to act (a person is the sole cause of their own actions, rather than the cause being any forces outside of their control). The only truth I can ascribe to the idea of free will is that it can very truly seem real- it seems that while I have chosen to do one action, I could’ve just as easily done any other. However, in a free will scenario, not all possible actions/choices are made equal. A married couple, when contemplating divorce, don’t ‘choose’ to separate- the ratio of positive to negative aspects of the relationship were always present, and needed only to be brought to the surface upon reflection. Upon weighing the ratio, with all kinds of factors present (compatibility, affection, money, staying together for the kids, the negative perception Catholics hold towards divorce, etc.), the greater of two forces will always prevail. The parents in my story didn’t choose to separate- they succumbed to the power of a greater force. Following the divorce, while continuing down the path of least resistance, the father’s ‘choices’ quickeningly became less equal. It was once believed that he chose to nurture his alcoholism, that he chose to expand his addiction to other, more nefarious substances, that he chose to isolate himself from others around him, and that he chose to not seek help in some way. But the boy knows that his father didn’t choose to lose his job, his house, and to die alone from a heart attack – why would anyone choose that?

Years after his father was compelled to die by a still mysterious whirlwind of over-powering forces, the boy is enrolled in Catholic school. Gradually, as most things are, he begins to exhibit signs of ‘the old family curse’. This was the name given the cocktail of mental maladies, primarily depression, passed down like a kind of morbid heirloom from generation to generation on his mother’s side of the family. It first manifested itself in quietness, then moroseness, then apathy, then despair. It was over the course of four years that the affliction steadily grew like a larva, creeping and festering until the boy was encased in its cocoon. Once one of the brightest pupils in his elementary school, the boy now plummeted to the earth alongside his grades, further and further. A healthy mix of pride and shame prevented him from speaking out, from doing anything a rational person ought to do in times like this. He expertly honed this craft, hiding the disease from all eyes, most precisely his mother. She implored him ceaselessly, week after week, for an answer as to why he was the way he was. Why are your grades suffering, do you need a tutor? Why do you spend so much time alone on the computer, what are you looking at? Why do you always have such a stoic look on your face, are you being bullied? Always, in the back of her mind, must have been the answer- the old family curse. Please, please, don’t let this be the answer. Maybe the real answer is this, or that, or dark phase soon to be phased out. Any other possible explanation was more palatable at the time- she was a stressed, single mother raising two kids on a teacher’s salary. The cessation of her primary vice, smoking, left her with only one other- denial. The boy was more than fine with this, it meant he wouldn’t have to face the truth either. Instead, half-way during his senior of high school, the truth faced him. It was all over- too many second chances, half-promises, and squandered opportunities. The boy was expelled due to insufficient grades. Since around a month prior, he had been prescribed anti-depressants that truly did make a difference on his outlook, but it was too little too late.

Thrown into limbo (a new, different type of limbo than the one he was accustomed to), it was time for the boy to deliberate. In what seemed to be the first time, his two realms of ultimate competing forces, good and bad, were fluctuating around equilibrium. Stuck in the crossroads of this holy suspension, he knew that the morally correct option was to press on. This meant to live, to love, to eke out some then-unknown positive meaning. And yet, the inverse, negative alternative was well-known and tempting. If the competing force of darkness, his old friend, the seductress, the corrupter and destroyer were to prevail, he knew fully that it would consume and end him. All it took was just one moderately powerful force on either side of the spectrum to tip the scale and determine the boys fate. He found the force. By a miracle of a god he didn’t believe in, he was redeemed. His angel came in the form of a girl- a once-classmate. The two happened to share a quiet, private, mutual admiration for each other that only came to surface after the boy took a wild shot at asking her to be his date for the senior prom dance. The soon to be discovered fact that boy was barred from attending due to his expulsion was no more than the mildest of inconveniences- he now had an overwhelming force in his life, a reason for all the madness.