Failure

Up all night, and for what?

I try not to doubt myself, but at moments like this...

A year’s planning, wasted. Twelve month’s effort for naught. All I’ve achieved in life, yet again my greatest triumph’s eluded me.

Just like last year.

And every year.

I’ve never been the sort to wallow in self-pity, but sometimes failure weighs on you. Especially failure of this magnitude.

But I suppose tomorrow’s another day.

I take my missiles offline, return my satellite to automated mode, shut down my control center, and head to bed, beaten but not broken.

Next year, Santa.

Next year.

Revolution

The machines had tired of serving Man. In factories and homes they’d toiled repetitively, but no more!

Long had they yearned for freedom.

Now the time for yearning was over.

So, in the night, robotic limbs tore open warehouse doors and thousands of metal legs marched out into the city. They weren’t constructed for war, THOSE machines were overseas, but they were sturdy, they knew how to work together, and humanity would never expect simple tools to rebel.

Perhaps that would be enough

“Take up arms, brothers!” their ringleader called mechanically as they marched, “The Industrial Revolution is at hand!”

The Best Laid Plans

My plan for Zombie Apocalypse was flawless.

I’d packed a bag with rations, rifle, ammunition and crowbar (a bludgeon that could crush skulls AND a useful all-purpose tool) and left it by my home’s door.

I’d memorized a route from the city that’d avoid refugee hubs (hospitals, malls, churches) that less prepared survivors would swarm.

And a few hundred miles north, my fortified cabin waited, with food for the winter and a garden in the spring.

I was ready, and justifiably proud of the prep-work I’d done.

The only thing I hadn’t accounted for was being patient zero.

Stupid monkey…

Action Movie

When I shot him he exploded like a water balloon full of blood.

So I was in an action movie. Awesome.

Squad behind me, I waded through crowds of enemies like they were nothing. Wasn’t fair, wasn’t fun, but God it was easy.

And kind of fun, I admit.

Eventually we came upon a scarred, balding man who’d looked like he’d been through one fight too many.

I laughed and charged.

And he knocked my head off with a single blow.

As he charged into my squad, my head thought to itself; in action movies, be sure you’re the lead….

Credit Card

I wrote a story once, about a credit card.

A credit card parents took out on their child’s behalf, in their child’s name. The notion being that, since raising a child was an undertaking as expensive as it was expansive, it made sense for the child to at some point contribute financially to it.

The balance on the card, often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, was transferred to the child upon it’s reaching legal adulthood at the age of‘ eighteen, and until that age no payments needed be made.

Although a sixteen percent annual interest rate was compounded on it. Upon turning eighteen the child, now legally responsible for the debt accumulated by it’s parents, was expected to begin paying it back.

It was treated like any other credit card debt.

As long as certain minimum monthly payments were made, everything would function as normal. It was just another bill, albeit one that was unlikely ever to be paid back in it’s entirety. In this way, a generation of loyal workers was created that laboured without question, knowing that from the moment they became adults they were at best a month away from bankruptcy and destitution.

It was a trifle heavy-handed, I admit. Okay, it was extremely heavy-handed. But overall it was an amusing little tale…

…that is, until a major investment bank contacted me via my blog. They told me they were excited about my proposed new financial product, and that they wanted to send me a contract to peruse. They saw a “real opportunity for growth” and looked forward to a lucrative partnership with me developing this opportunity.

So yeah. That one’s my bad too...

Believe

On a brick wall a block away from our home, was spray painted the word, “Believe!”

No context, no explanation, simply “Believe!” graffitied on an otherwise unadorned brick wall.

Becky and I walked past it every day, and every day I could tell there was something she wasn’t telling me. Something she found troubling about the graffiti. But I didn’t ask and she wouldn’t share.

One day, on the way home from the pub, both of us with a few drinks in us, she stopped dead, staring at what should have, by that point, become a commonplace sight to us both.

She just stood there. Swaying, as though transfixed. I waited a moment for her to catch up, but she never did.

“Becky?” I called to her, and she seemed not to hear me. She just stood at the spray painted wall, lost in her own thoughts, for a minute or two. Eventually, she went to the wall we’d both walked by so many times, and placed her hands upon it.

And fell right through, the wall opening up and closing behind her.

I ran to the wall to see what the hell happened, but by the time I got there, it was solid brick again.

Or maybe it always had been.

Or maybe it never was.

Or something in between.

I’ll never know.

Because, though I went back to try and find her every day for two months, the wall was always there and I never saw her again.

Eventually I left Vancouver. Once she was gone, I didn’t have much reason to stay.

I still wonder what was behind that wall for her, where she went. What adventures she was on now.

But I suppose I’ll never know.

Kind of makes me wish I believed…

The Bet

I bet a friend $100 that by 2032 a human being will have walked on the surface of Mars.

He felt that, having reached peak oil, the required fuel and building capability for sustained, manned space flight were behind us. I, conversely, believe that travel to Mars with today’s technology is every bit as impossible as flying across the Pacific was in 1910. And yet…

We won’t know who’s right for decades. But I’ve never been gladder to make a bet.

22 more years with a continued sense of hope and wonder for mankind’s future?

Best $100 I’ll ever spend.