Michael

One evening after work, while watching TV, Michael decided to relax. He breathed in, he breathed out. Breath in−his expanding chest stretched the muscles in his back. Breath out−those muscles needed stretching, apparently. Breath in. Breath out. The Bruins were playing in Florida. He started by trying to relax his face. He clicked on the sofaside lamp so that he was not squinting into the TV's glare. He tried not to squint. He imagined flattening the crow's feet that framed his brown eyes. His will was a steamroller, his flesh was soft asphalt. He found that his face presented two difficulties. First, faces were complicated. Where did sinuses end and muscles begin? Could sinuses relax? They certainly ached. He was congested and his sinuses swole and throbbed. And muscles, likewise, ache, especially when tense. He imagined taking a needle to his face, popping the tissue that was bloated and taut, relieving the tension, or sucking out the mucous(?) that was clogging his sinuses' tubes(?). The second problem with relaxing his face was that he caught his reflection in the TV's dead space, and the zombie slackjaw terrified him.

I don't write well under pressure.

Check facebook. Sip tea. Write sentence. Pen stops working. Throw pen across room. Scour house for other pens. Sip tea. Check facebook. Choose new pen. Sip tea. Write sentence. Pen stops working. Swear at pen. Pick up pen from other side of room. Write sentence. Still not working. Throw pen across room. Choose new pen. Sip tea. Find quote. Put book down. Swear. Find quote. Insert bookmark. Put book down. Write quote. Check quote. Groan. Hit forehead with book. Re-check quote. Rest head on palm. Finish writing quote. Pen stops working. Stab page. Stab page. Stab page. Choose new pen. Sip tea. Sip tea. Check facebook. Write status.

On a cloudy day, Larry crosses the road. He looks both ways. He thinks of cars. He thinks about how easy it is to propel a thousand pounds of metal, rubber, and light across hundreds of miles. Or, if not easy, then thoughtless. Taken for granted. Magic that's lost its magic. He thinks about climate change, the coming apocalypse, about a million cars (trucks, vans, SUVs, etc) speeding along a million streets. Every second, a small cloud of exhaust is pumped through each of their mufflers and out each of their exhaust pipes. A million cars, a million small clouds, every second. Every day. "I wouldn't want to be the ozone layer these days," he thinks. He imagines all the smoke being pumped into a single room. Even a big room--a stadium or a hangar--and you'd still be in trouble, if you were in there, with all those cars. Not a likely situation. But he'd heard of people committing suicide that way, locked in their garage with their car running. Just one car, in a garage. Larry wants to save the world. He is walking. He wants an electric car, powered by clean energy, by dams that don't create unnatural lakes, by wind turbines that don't concuss passing birds with their gargantuan blades. (Or do they slice them apart? Unpleasant thoughts.) A car powered by the cleanest energy, by a miracle surge of electricity that is soon to be invented by a brilliant, slightly mad, socially abysmal, soon-to-be billionaire scientist, slaving away in a lab, the basement of a university in Europe, probably in Geneva, burning chemicals whose acrid, dull brown smoke will shorten his life, causing horrific lung problems that prevent said scientist from enjoying his overwhelming wealth. Or maybe the scientist will get cancer from handling too many mysterious radioactive stones. Either way, he'll have furthered science and done a great service to mankind. Larry apologizes for thinking of the scientist as socially abysmal. Too harsh! He wonders what the scientist, seeing him cross the street, would think. Too self-conscious! Do the brilliant ever consider other people? No. Their thoughts should be perpetually pinned to the solving of formulas, the workings of machines, the investigating and describing of the heavens and the earth. Larry thinks about technology--the developments the last hundred years, the developments of the last ten years, the developments of the next hundred years. Exciting thoughts, like "What's in store for humanity?" Larry is hit by a car.